On Saturday morning we woke to a beautiful winter wonderland. The snow was falling at nearly an inch an hour! Mike took a few minutes to try out his Pugsley in the snow, then he went inside to pack for his conference in New Orleans while I shoveled the driveway. It was literally back-breaking work. The snow was so incredibly heavy, and it kept sticking to my metal shovel - each scoop of snow had to be banged against the ground in order for it to fall off the shovel. Painful - especially for me of so little upper body strength!
After I finally finished (actually by the time I was done, the top of the driveway had nearly an inch of fresh snow already, but too bad! I was done!), Mike and I realized we had a few errands to run before he left for NOLA. We headed out around 10:30 or 11, and when we got home around 1:30 the power was out. An inconvenience, sure, but not a huge deal, right? I mean, we usually lose power 2-3 times a year, but it's always back within an hour or two, and often within even a few minutes. So, without thinking much about it, Mike did all his last-minute packing and then got picked up to go to the airport.
After he left I settled in to my week-end to do list. Balance the checkbooks? Nope, no power. Do laundry? Nope, no power. Bake bread? Nope, no power. Cook my planned weekend meals (butternut squash soup, roasted root veggies, mac&cheese)? Nope, no power. Work on a quilt? Nope, no power. Run on the treadmill? Nope, no power. Make some tea to warm up? Nope, no power. Hmmm...
Well, at least I had my Kindle! I curled up under my down blanket and grabbed my ereader. Tried to turn it on and...
You have got to be kidding me. Un-freakin-believable.
Sigh. Time to go old school. I figured I would just kill some time reading the stack of magazines and catalogs on our table. For surely the power would come back on at any minute, right?
I read some magazines, shoveled the driveway again (ugh!), talked to my parents on the phone (breaking the news to them that I am going to get a tattoo -- the awkwardness of that conversation certainly also contributed to the overall misery of the weekend!), and read some more magazines.
By the time 4pm rolled around, I was getting frustrated. And cold! With no fan to force the hot air upstairs, our gas heat wasn't doing me too much good. I called Amanda, who was scheduled to come over around 5:30, in order to let her know that I wasn't going to be able to make us dinner before our orchestra concert. Ugh. When she arrived to pick me up at 5:30 I was bundled under multiple blankets, still reading magazines - but now by the light of my camping headlamp since it was pitch dark in our house.
We headed out and had a lovely dinner and a wonderful Orchestra concert. I was able to warm up and even relax - for surely the power would be on by the time I got home, right?
As we drove back to my house, my spirits initially lifted when I saw lights on across the street! But as we got closer I realized that all the lights on my block were out. That's right - my square block was out of power, but basically every block around me (including across the street!) was unaffected. Ugh.
And it was cold inside - 52 degrees! I quickly fed the cats their evening snack then bundled up in my long underwear, three fleeces, a fleece and wool hat, a scarf, and two down comforters. I actually was quite warm throughout the night, but I didn't sleep well - there was no white noise (no power = no bedroom fan) and I kept expecting the power to come on at any minute, as unrealistic as I logically knew that was.
Sunday morning (now 50 degrees inside) I headed out to meet Dotty for our biweekly Sunday morning walk. Luckily I was able to convince her to walk at the MOA rather than outside at the lake, so I was able to warm up again as we did laps around the mall. I was still optimistic (pathologically so?) that the power would be back on by the time I got home. It had to be, right?!?
But yet again I was disappointed. At this point I cranked up the fireplace and lit the stove (confronting my fear of holding up a match to the burner - scary!). I made some tea and then packed up all of our perishable food - fridge foods went in bags into the garage and freezer foods were placed in coolers and packed with snow. Then I curled up by the fire to read the Sunday paper.
I debated taking a shower - a hot shower sounded lovely, but I didn't really want to sit in the cold house with wet hair. Eventually I decided that it wouldn't be TOO rude to show up for my monthly mahjong date with my hair drier in tow, so I took a long shower right before leaving for Megan's house at 2pm - it was heavenly. Megan not only let me dry my hair there, she also let my recharge my Kindle (surely that would invoke Murphy's law so the power would be on by the time I returned home, right?) and she let me recharge my phone (recently dead, after all the whiny Facebook status updates I was posting). She also let me take some yummy cake home since my kitchen was pretty much out of commission. At this point, the power had to back on my the time I got home, right?
Sadly, I returned home to darkness one more time. It was only 5:30, but it felt like midnight. I was sick of the dark, sick of the cold. I resolved that I would find a cat-friendly hotel for Monday night if the power wasn't back on after work the next day. I read my Kindle by headlamp for about three hours, then gave up and got ready for bed. Luckily I had dressed in my pajamas and long underwear after my shower (another attempt to invoke Murphy's Law - and no, I wasn't at all ashamed to show up for a mahjong date in my pjs!) so I didn't have to change clothes in the 48 degree cold. (Yes, you read that right - 48 degrees inside.) I decided to read one more chapter in bed, trying to postpone my bedtime to the slightly more reasonable hour of 9pm. It was then that I noticed that I could see my breath. Ugh.
By then I was really starting to nod off, so I was rushing through the last few pages of the chapter when I was suddenly startled awake - my heart nearly stopped as a blaze of light and noise erupted in the house. I was convinced for a split second that someone was breaking through the window next to my bed. But after my heart slowed I realized that it was just our power!!! Finally!!! POWER!!! And with power comes HEAT!!! After calling Mike to give him the good news, I was already starting to warm up. It felt positively tropical in our house - I got out of bed to check the thermostat, worried I had accidentally bumped it up, and saw that it was currently 56 degrees. 56 had never felt so warm!
It was painful to have to turn the lights off so soon after they came back on, but by then it truly was my bedtime and I had to get up early the next morning. It had been such a long, hard weekend of...nothing, really. I got absolutely nothing done, but I had felt stressed the entire time. I'm already counting down to the next weekend so I can relax!
If there's any good that came from the weekend, though, it's that it did seem to help the cat fiasco. Shared adversity and all, I guess. I think they were both so cold that they were willing to tolerate each other and curl up on my lap together. And now I haven't heard a single hiss yet tonight! I'm again cautiously optimistic (hopefully not pathological so in this situation), but if losing power helped to heal their relationship, then it was all worth it.
So now I'm off to chip away at my weekend to do list...
Oh yeah - and for the record, let it be known that I have resolved to NEVER go winter camping.
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1 comment:
no winter camping or ice fishing? I thought that you had already made that resolution...
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