It was a short night. Starting at 1:32am on Saturday morning, after returning home at 11:30pm from an extended family gathering, a crash followed by a freight train sound of never ending thunderous annoyance for the next eight hours. By 2:00am we had both kids in our bed as the wind whipped around our house during a windstorm with wind gusts up to 60 mph. Our house Christmas lights hung on tight, but some strings let go too soon and clattered around our window for the remaining event.
Hopping back and forth from his room, to the family room couch downstairs, my son probably slept a total of four hours. He could not settle down and the noise was l-o-u-d. I too hopped back and forth from my room to the couch as I kept thinking of things that I needed: my alarm clock, more blankets, my pillow,etc. etc. etc. I probably slept a total of two hours.
By 6:30am we had lost power.
I do not mind camping. I have no electricity when camping. I am fine with that.
I do not like to have no power and be at home. I do not like how my house turns ugly real quick and somehow every spec of dirt and dust and everything is noticed; and you can't switch on a vacuum to fix it. Blankets and flashlights and survival are spread throughout. Not my style.
And yesterday was the day for our family gathering with my brother's family to celebrate Christmas at my parent's house. Oh, great!, you might think, You'll go to a house with power!! All will be fine.
No, my parents were without power too and they live further out from big cities than we do. When they lose power, it is a really big deal.
As we plugged in our mini generator to blow dry our hair after showers and get lookin' like we should, we hopped in the car and found on our drive South that literally our neighborhood and my parent's neighborhood were The Only's without power. The odds.
My parents have a big generator that works their furnace and certain sections of their house. We were able to pull off an entire Christmas dinner with two kitchen outlets, a one burner plug-in, my dad's barbeque on the patio, and a crockpot. One would not know the difference of how this meal was prepared unless they had watched six adults huddled around one lamp and three candles and taking turns with the two outlets for the five hour prep before dinner.
Really, it was fantastic. Teamwork at it's best. Although it is still too fresh in my mind - the lose of power - to take time to post pictures and go into any additional specifics, I know I will appreciate our accomplishment in a few more hours (... or days or weeks or months) from now.
Oh, and power was restored at my parent's house at 10:35pm ... as soon as the last Christmas gift was unwrapped by the kiddos, and the adults were hanging on by threads to the exhausting, creative, survivalistic day, and the four cousins were still Wired Up! from spending the day together.
Pictures later ... I have a house to clean up, and a Sunday School class to teach, and somewhere find time for a nap as last night we crawled into bed at 12:35am while the wind was knocking at our window taunting us. But nothing came of it .. except for ....
a light dusting of snow this morning.
Oh the weather outside is Frightful ...
1 comment:
You are lucky to have water when you lose power as our neighborhood does not city water but our own wells so no power - no water for showers or toilets. I also don't have a generator. Even if I did, I probably wouldn't want to have to deal with it.
You are lucky not to have any damage to your house with the high winds causing trees or big limbs to come down.
Sounds like the gathering at your parents' house turned out very well in spite of no power.
We are so dependent on the power.
Several years ago, I was without it for 4 days in Nov. Fortunately a friend on another street got her's back early and had room in her freezor so I loaded up everything and drove it there.
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