Out of consideration for those individuals that withstood the actual hurricane and for those that lost their homes and some their very lives, I must preface this by saying a word of thanks for the many blessings that we have. Living without electricity for a few days was a small burden, but it did enlighten me in several ways.
ON SUNDAY, the day of the windstorm, we lost electricity around 4:00. We realized how totally unprepared we are for a real emergency. We had no functioning flashlight, only a small supply of candles, and two half-full oil lamps with only one extra bottle of oil. I won't even mention our low supplies of food, dog food, and water. Should this have been a more severe situation we would of had some real problems. The house sustained no damage but the corn was blown over (which I'll need to harvest and preserve as soon as we have the means) and we lost a limb on a birch tree--again, many thanks for our overwhelming blessings.
ON MONDAY it took us a while to finally determine what living with no electricity would mean and to compensate for it. We mentally made a long list of our blessings and were thankful to have what we did when so many others had so much less. Maya and I unloaded the dirty dishwasher and washed the dishes by hand. Steve put the essentials into ice packed coolers and moved what we could from our freezer to a friend's down the street. The girls watched their math video with the DVD player in the truck. We made a trip to Walmart for extra candles, flashlights, and a hand-crank lantern that runs without batteries. We purchased boxed and canned food as well bread and extra peanut butter--I was happy to have my gas stove which made it possible to cook food on the range top. Thankfully we were a small pocket of houses in Marysville without electricity or these things would have been impossible to find in our small town. We were also quite thankful that the weather has been mild--being either very hot or very cold would have made things more difficult. We made some mental notes about what we should do to be more prepared for emergencies in the future including procuring a battery backup for the sump pump and switching the gas burning fire place over to wood.
TUESDAY: my attitude wasn't so good. Laundry piled up, it was no longer "fun" to hand wash the dishes, we all realized we couldn't read at bedtime which is a big part of our nightly routine, the floors were in desperate need of vacuuming, the fridge started to smell and the ice was melting and running out of the freezer onto the hardwood along with a defrosted strawberry goo. It was apparent that this was the day to clean out the fridge and pitch all of the stuff in it and clean underneath and behind it. All I could think of was, well, at least I have a clean refrigerator. I am so thankful for the friends and neighbors that helped in so many ways. A friend washed and dried a pile of wet towels we had left after a large water spill on Monday (long story) and took my turn making dinner for a family that I had signed up for the week before. We had a nice meal of leftover grilled chicken that I had been icing carefully so as not to lose it and fried corn from a neighbor's freezer that was thawing and needed to be consumed (whatever we can do to help out!). I ended the day thankful for the friends that line the streets and look out for each other in so many ways. If one has they freely give. We are blessed beyond measure.
WEDNESDAY I walked around in a stupor of disbelief. I dried my hair at a friends house, charged my phone, and left her a load of laundry which she dried and folded so willingly.
THURSDAY my disbelief was turning to frustration as we had consumed most of our iced milk and leftovers and the laundry would soon be a major issue. Thankfully we got power back at 9:10. The first thing I did was start the washer.
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