Our Scary Halloween

Halloween is supposed to be scary.  And when you factor in diabetes, it's got some additional scary elements. 

Thanks to mother nature, we had a differently scary Halloween. 

Here in the northeast, we got "tricked" with a horror show of a storm.  Saturday afternoon and night featured a soundtrack of creaking, cracking trees crashing to the ground all around us.  Seven inches of snow piled up in our neighborhood. The power at our house went out on Saturday mid afternoon and stayed out until late Monday night.  By Sunday morning, there wasn't a house in town that didn't at least have a pile of branches in front of it, if not whole downed trees.  Many streets were, and still are, impassible.  The makings of a horror movie indeed.  Or a sign of the apocalypse.

Things are beginning to look up.  Most importantly, the power at our house is back on.  There is a fleet of 20 tree trucks using the nearby school parking lot as its headquarters.  The sun is shining and quickly melting the snow.

Everyone is challenged by a power outage.  It's hard to keep warm, fed, entertained, and connected to friends and family.  It's scary to wonder about the consequences if the basement sump-pump's battery back-up system fails, or if you're not careful enough lighting the gas stove with the lighter.

Keeping hearth and home together was the first priority during this storm, but  diabetes also needed attention.  Site change needed to be planned for daylight hours so we didn't have to juggle flashlights and sharp objects.  Panic set in when I realized we were down to the dregs of our last bottle of insulin.  Planning balanced meals without the benefit of refrigeration, ovens or light to cook by was an increasing challenge culminating in last night's pizza from the small stretch of our town's main street with power.  And complicated by the number of bagels which thawed out in the freezer and therefore "needed" to be consumed.

Our town has rescheduled Halloween for Friday, at which point we'll deal with the usual Halloween challenge of counting carbs in unlabeled "fun sized" candy, and the annual ironic low blood sugar while walking around the neighborhood.  But we'll be grateful to return to a warm home, where we can cook a healthy supper to counterbalance the snickers bars.