No power for 34.5 hours. When I write it down, it doesn't seem so long. But it felt pretty long. By the time the power came on, the house was good and cold. Looking back now, I found that we were pretty well set up. We had water. That in itself was a huge blessing. Where we lived before, if the power was off, the water was off. And then to find that we has HOT water. Wow. We made sure that the dishes were washed as soon as they were used. That kept our hands warm and it helped the kitchen stay a little warmer too. And then we had our gas stove to cook on. Triple blessing. And then we realized that we could keep our cell phones charged in the car. That was great too.
We dug out our camping gear and we set up a lantern for the evenings and we have a little camping heater that helped keep us a bit warm. And then we all dressed in several layers. I was very thankful for Tim's big socks. I think he will be getting a few more of those, as all three of us had to share the ones that he had. :-) They were the BEST for keeping feeties warm.
The one thing that I was most surprised about was that nothing dried. NOTHING. My coat is still wet from two days ago. My gloves finally were dry about an hour before the power came back on.
I am also surprised that I feel like an electricity hog now when I am using a computer, the washer, dryer, the furnace and a light at the same time. And I mean, who needs to light a whole room when I can get by with a candle? So that is what I decided to do...write this by candlelight.
The one thing that we found was that we would have liked to have some way to charge the laptop. We will be looking into charging it in the car as well. We had enough power to watch two shows the first night and then we went and charged it up at a coffee shop in Lacey yesterday morning, so we had enough to watch another show last night. It is funny though that the series of shows we have been watching as a family lately is a BBC series called "Victorian Farm". This group of people restored and lived on a farm for a year as if they were in that period. It was a very enjoyable series and we learned a lot from it about how to live without a lot of the things we take for granted.
I also found that not having a washer and dryer was tough. I hadn't caught up on my laundry prior to the power outage and there were clothes in the washer...that was a quandary. But I think it taught us too that we can wear fewer clothes and change them less often. I mean really, even when we are working hard, it is rare that we should have to change our clothes every day.
As a rule, we keep our house at an even 55 degrees at night. It is funny, but I am finding that very comfortable now as I write. And doing that not only saves electricity, but we were totally set up for our cold nights without power. We had enough blankets and the animals all just came in to sleep with us in the warmth of our room.
My guys missed the computer and their time playing games on it. For me, I found that I missed the connections that I have through email and facebook. But I also found that I enjoyed the dark. I enjoyed having my family congregate in one room and chat. I enjoyed going outside and finding the neighbors who had the scoop on the neighborhood. I enjoyed the creativity and the pace of it.
It has warmed up and it is raining now. With the amount of snow in place, there will be issues in this area with flooding soon. I don't think that this will affect us, at least at home. Because of the ice storm after the snow, there is so much tree damage. We ourselves lost one big tree and at least part of a small tree. There will be a lot of clean up to do once things all pan out. But for us, there is no emergency. The trees fell away from our house and fence, and we are counting our blessings once again. I will be hoping that I will be able to find someone who can use the wood from our big tree. It will be sad to see it go, but...there is something about new beginnings...the rhythm of life.
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