Beyond the realization that Incidents With Wild Creatures can be made even more complex than necessary by there being no power in the house, we learned a few other things during the Great Outage of 08:1. Snow is a good thing. A very good thing. Besides being pretty, and making life a bit more interesting, it provides a place to stash one's fridge items close by. For awhile, there was so much, we could just set the milk, cheese, and so on, out on the deck. As the snow became more scarce, toward the end of the week, it became necessary to shovel it together to provide enough cooling "power". Even more important (to me), was how I could keep big containers full of it, ready to bring in to heat on the stove to make, yes, water. While we bought water for drinking and cooking, every other use was covered by melted snow. For me, the priority was to keep the plumbing working, if you know what I mean (wink wink). Beyond that, there was cleaning up in the mornings, washing dishes, watering plants, etc. Having so much snow made it all possible.
2. Jar candles are the Power Outage Superstars of the wax world. I don't care what the warning labels say, you can put them anywhere, forget about them, and they do their thing without any mess or danger. They're not all created equal, however. Several eventually died. But two of them still have at least a couple more disasters left in them.
3. Note to selves: Get some battery lanterns. Candles, no matter how steady and reliable, don't deliver a lot of light power. Our booklight and backpacking headlamp made it possible to read, do puzzles, cook, knit, etc. But the light is still pretty wimpy. A few lanterns would have made a big difference. Candlelight was fun for one evening. After that, well, not so much. And, now, I'm cleaning up wax everywhere (I thought I was so careful!).
4. A back-up generator is in our future. We learned how not irritating generator noise can be if it's making it possible to flush the toilets and run the computers. We like a quiet forest as much as anyone, maybe more than most, but the noise from our neighbors' generators was objectionable only because it wasn't our noise, too.
5. We see more movies when there's no power at home. Two in one week, which isn't our usual pattern, by a stretch. Perhaps it's just the overwhelming urge to sit mute and mindless in front of a screen. I'm guessing the Nevada County movie houses did pretty well, for a stormy week. Handy tip: "National Treasure"--rental, at best; "Charlie Wilson's War"--worth at least the bargain rates.
6. Power makes life SO much simpler. This is self-evident, of course. Who doesn't know this? I learned, however, that, every day, it took me 'til almost noon to: get new snow melting and refill the outside bowls and buckets; use that snowmelt to clean the kitchen/wash dishes (too dark to do it at night); clean up my own little self; get the fire in the woodstove going and get enough wood in to last the day; tidy up and do any little bits of laundry by hand--all in addition to my usual paper walk/breakfast routine. OK, so I'm slow.
7. I love clean hair more than I knew. I'm a backpacker, so I know from dirty hair. But eight days between washings was beyond the pale. I wore a ski cap during all waking hours for the last three days, looking quite like a chemo patient. Washing it, besides using too much water, would have meant letting it air dry in the cold. Worth a few minutes of generator noise.
8. For Tom, of course, this last week was a total hassle. Without power/internet/phone, he can't do one thing here at home. So he spent as many hours as possible at the local bakery/cafe, where they had free internet. A blessing, for sure, that it was available. But, of course, not optimal working conditions. And the food--not that great, apparently. Frustrating. It was interesting to go back to that off-in-the-morning-back-at-night routine for a while, though. So quiet around here.
9. Power failures are not good for one's waistline. Hardly a day went by, when we didn't think ourselves needy of some little treat to compensate for our Hardships. Cookies from the bakery (gotta support them for providing the free internet service), pudding, Swedish Fish, Junior Mints at the movie, and so on. The New Year's diet got a late start.
10. More seriously, we LOVE the convenience of power coming to our very home. That becomes a stark reality when we don't have it. But we also know that we have to continue to do better to conserve it, as much as possible. We've always tried to be conscious and responsible about that. But, this experience shows us, again, how much we actually use, and how much others, who don't have it, would benefit by being able to tap into some. So, working on ways to use less, and supporting efforts to develop sustainable energy allows more folks to improve their lives without diminishing everyone's experience. Off the soapbox.
We'll definitely be more ready for any power outage, in the future. Just part of our new learning curve. Skunk-in-the-house; power-failure; dirty-hair crisis. We'll do much better, next time.
(pictures are of: the snow storm on Saturday, tree down on our street (we cut it up with saws), our snow "fridge" on the last day, melting snow on the stove, some of the candles that were scattered all over the house)
