When the Lights Go Out

 

This weekend, we lost power during the wild windstorm that screamed through on Sunday afternoon. All afternoon we had watched as the wind roared through the trees. We joke that anytime a squirrel farts in our woods, we lose power. We expected to lose power as soon as the winds started picking up. Of course, we had just picked up a load of cardboard for making new garden beds. The winds tossed those everywhere but where we wanted them. 

The rain started coming down sideways like a wave of needles. For a good solid minute, none of the rain hit the ground... no joke. It was all sideways. Never seen such a thing before! 

And then, just as quickly, click and the lights went out. 

We assembled the candles and flashlights. Our phones had more than half battery power. We settled in for a late afternoon blackout. It was 4pm. It looked like 8pm outside. Not total darkness...but visibility was next to nil.

The sun hid behind the clouds until it had squeezed all of the rain out of it. Then the sun poked its head out... which was strange, because all of a sudden the house was dark and the sky was bright. Our candles felt quaint as the sun played peekaboo. The wind returned but without the rain this time. It was nearly 60°F around noon Sunday. By the time "sunset" occurred, it was just over 30°F. 

The local power company said we'd have power back in two hours. That didnt happen. Then they said six hours. We sat around in the dark, drinking tea and wondering when the lights would return. Dinnertime rolled around. Leto's apartment is all electric, so their cooking options were limited. We gathered a few things out of their fridge quickly and brought them over to our house. I always forget that even though we have a gas stove, the oven requires electricity to run the computer panel that controls the oven. Sigh. I miss ovens with a simple knob. 

It was right about then that I also realized that even though we had water pressure, we didnt have hot water since the pump that runs the heat system was out. A couple of two gallon pots were set up on the stove to boil water to wash dishes. Inconvenient, but still on the fun side of a stormy evening.  Dinner was simple: steamed carrots, brown rice with zucchini, green onions and spinach, then a big pot of Cuban black beans. Very filling and warm. 

After dinner, we kept checking the outage report to see how soon we'd be getting power back. The texts from the power company no longer had an ETA... instead they said: ASSESSING.  Well shit. 

10pm came and went and the texts still said assessing.

Not terribly long after my phone needed its recharging, another text came through letting us know that the new ETA was 10pm.... Monday. So much for assessing. 

Like I said at the start, we're accustomed to frequently losing power, but it usually lasts just a couple of hours. A few months back, I bought a battery backup for my CPAP unit. I wish I could sleep without the CPAP, but I can't. One of these days, I'll try to write about how I came to love my CPAP and how many volts it takes to run the heart and the brain. 

What our house doesn't have is any form of backup heat. When the morning started, it was quite pleasant outside. The heat hadn't been running. Same thing was true in Leto's apartment. By 10pm we were all snuggled up in fleeces and blankets as the temperatures dropped. 

By morning, the house was cold, but the apartment was 55°F... which is not good for houseplants or Leto's fish. We boiled more water on the stove and settled in for a long cold day. Five gallon buckets at a time, Leto hauled hot water and reverse siphoned water into their fish tank. Eventually they were able to get the cichlids back to being contentedly warm again.  

As the day dragged on into afternoon, we heated water for tea (and warmth). The plethora of candles we had laid out the night before were sputtering or already out. I improvised a lantern out of an LED flashlight and a milk jug. My scoutmaster would have chuckled. 

LED flashlight hung inside a water jug, made for a serviceable lantern.

 

Bit by bit, our battery packs drained. Phones were down to negligible levels. Books that we'd received for Christmas were suddenly highly entertaining.... because there wasn't much else. Not long before 4pm rolled around, the lights flickered once, then crapped out again. Nancy said a few bad words. Both of us looked out the window, hoping to see the lights coming on. And poof, all the lights returned. With the lights came all the beeping! oh, the beeping! Fire alarms, the computer battery backup devices, the microwave... oh my gosh the beeping! 

As we went throughout the house resetting clocks, we plugged all of our batteries into every available outlet... just in case. Despite having multiple little battery packs to recharge our phones while traveling, it wouldn't have done much more than a day in circumstances like this. It was quite a surprise to see how quickly everything loses charge. The other big surprise was seeing how bad cell service can be when the power to that cell tower is down. Hmmm. Not much in the way of other cell overlap.

Afternoon turned to evening as we slowly started trusting that the power was going to stay on. We played music in the kitchen. Dinner lacked candlelight, but the warm house with cozy lamps more than made up for it.