These next few posts are going to be like diary entries. Sort of a chronicle of my days living like the pioneers. Without the hunting because it’s not hunting season and without the outhouse because thank goodness we still have working water. I thought to start writing for the blog on Wednesday.
Let me tell you about my week. Starting with Monday the 26th or Day One.
DAY ONE
-Monday-
Up at the regular time, getting the kids ready for school. Watching the morning news. The weatherman says that we are under an ice advisory until noon on Tuesday. Great. I was glad I’d made a trip to the grocery store on Saturday. There was a run on milk and bread and eggs and all that stuff that people flock to the store for before storms. No school closing yet because there wasn’t much of anything happening when the hubby got home from work I told him that we may need to bring in some wood just in case we lost power. In all the time we’ve had this electric company our power has never been out for more than a couple of hours. So I was confident going to bed that we’d do alright.
DAY TWO
-Tuesday-
About 3:30AM we woke up because we heard the smoke detectors beeping. Let me explain that our smoke detectors are hardwired in the house, which means no batteries so when the power goes off they will beep once every couple of minutes. So anyway, that’s what woke us up. We got up, lit a few candles and checked on the kids. HELPFUL HINT: Locate your corded phone before the power goes out! This is only if you aren’t already using one. We have two corded phones…..somewhere. Luckily I remembered there is a speaker phone built into our recliner. Then we waited. Thinking that the power would soon be restored. That was not the case. The hubby went on to work as usual.
I got up around 8:30AM when my mom called to see how we were fairing. After talking to her, I phoned the emergency power outage number… busy. I called the main electric company office. I got a real person!! She took my name, number, address, and all that jazz. I managed to get a fire started in only a few minutes. Last time I tried, I sat in front of the fireplace for 2 hours and still couldn’t get it started. I called the electric company’s power outage number several times before finally getting through. Only to hear a recording telling me they were aware of an outage in our area. By 2 o’clock we still didn’t have any power but I had managed to keep the temperature in the house right at 58 degrees. Warm if it had been the outside temperature, but practically freezing inside. I called the actual electric office number again. She said the same thing the recording said. They are aware of the outage and we are on the list. We gave our neighbors a call after the hubby got home from work. They too were without power. However, she knew the source -- downed power lines within a mile of our houses. She said they’d called that morning and told the power company about it. I told her about my phone call telling me we were on “the list”. But, I said, the girl didn’t tell me how far down the list we were! She said apparently, we’re at the bottom!
Not the best example of all the ice, but you get the idea.
My mom called to check and see how we were doing again. I told her we were going insane, but we were managing. It’s frustrating not having any source of information. All I could think about was something hot to eat or at least warm. Then just like in the cartoons a light bulb popped up over my head. We go camping and we have a sandwich maker for the campfire. Ca-ching!! We had grilled cheese sandwiches cooked over a hot fire… in our living room. It was nice, but I still longed for some hot chocolate or coffee. At this point, we were around hour 16 of good ol’ pioneer living. After twiddling our thumbs and finding it not as fun as we hoped, I found every candle I cold find and we played “Sorry” by candlelight. Not exactly my idea of family game night, but it worked at the time.
To be continued...
Let me tell you about my week. Starting with Monday the 26th or Day One.
DAY ONE
-Monday-
Up at the regular time, getting the kids ready for school. Watching the morning news. The weatherman says that we are under an ice advisory until noon on Tuesday. Great. I was glad I’d made a trip to the grocery store on Saturday. There was a run on milk and bread and eggs and all that stuff that people flock to the store for before storms. No school closing yet because there wasn’t much of anything happening when the hubby got home from work I told him that we may need to bring in some wood just in case we lost power. In all the time we’ve had this electric company our power has never been out for more than a couple of hours. So I was confident going to bed that we’d do alright.
DAY TWO
-Tuesday-
About 3:30AM we woke up because we heard the smoke detectors beeping. Let me explain that our smoke detectors are hardwired in the house, which means no batteries so when the power goes off they will beep once every couple of minutes. So anyway, that’s what woke us up. We got up, lit a few candles and checked on the kids. HELPFUL HINT: Locate your corded phone before the power goes out! This is only if you aren’t already using one. We have two corded phones…..somewhere. Luckily I remembered there is a speaker phone built into our recliner. Then we waited. Thinking that the power would soon be restored. That was not the case. The hubby went on to work as usual.
I got up around 8:30AM when my mom called to see how we were fairing. After talking to her, I phoned the emergency power outage number… busy. I called the main electric company office. I got a real person!! She took my name, number, address, and all that jazz. I managed to get a fire started in only a few minutes. Last time I tried, I sat in front of the fireplace for 2 hours and still couldn’t get it started. I called the electric company’s power outage number several times before finally getting through. Only to hear a recording telling me they were aware of an outage in our area. By 2 o’clock we still didn’t have any power but I had managed to keep the temperature in the house right at 58 degrees. Warm if it had been the outside temperature, but practically freezing inside. I called the actual electric office number again. She said the same thing the recording said. They are aware of the outage and we are on the list. We gave our neighbors a call after the hubby got home from work. They too were without power. However, she knew the source -- downed power lines within a mile of our houses. She said they’d called that morning and told the power company about it. I told her about my phone call telling me we were on “the list”. But, I said, the girl didn’t tell me how far down the list we were! She said apparently, we’re at the bottom!
Not the best example of all the ice, but you get the idea.
My mom called to check and see how we were doing again. I told her we were going insane, but we were managing. It’s frustrating not having any source of information. All I could think about was something hot to eat or at least warm. Then just like in the cartoons a light bulb popped up over my head. We go camping and we have a sandwich maker for the campfire. Ca-ching!! We had grilled cheese sandwiches cooked over a hot fire… in our living room. It was nice, but I still longed for some hot chocolate or coffee. At this point, we were around hour 16 of good ol’ pioneer living. After twiddling our thumbs and finding it not as fun as we hoped, I found every candle I cold find and we played “Sorry” by candlelight. Not exactly my idea of family game night, but it worked at the time.
To be continued...
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