More Power Outage Ruminations

I had been working outside when the power was restored. I heard a neighbor's generator shut off. Immediately I looked at my house and noticed that the lights were on. I dropped my bow saw and ran up the hill to the house, pulling off my work gloves as I ran.

My first priority was to plug in the well pump motor and then set the circuit breaker for the furnace. But when I got down into the basement, it was so much darker than the outdoors. I couldn't see where the pump's plug was. I turned on my small key-chain flashlight to help me locate the plug and outlet.

Then I opened the breaker panel door, located the furnace breaker and switched it on. I was disappointed that I did not hear the circulating pumps start up. The power was out for so long that the furnace clock reset to midnight, which is programed as a setback period of no heat and hot water. So I would have to open the manual to figure out how to set the time on that furnace.

It wasn't until then that I realized that I didn't need the silly flashlight. I could just turn on the darn light in that room! I had actually forgotten that I could flip a switch to get light! I set the clock on the furnace computer and felt relief that it fired up.

Next I flushed the two toilets. We were running low on water in the bath tub, so it was hard to get enough water in the bucket to do a proper job of flushing. The water in them was dingy, but at least we kept the solid waste down the drain.

Then I went into the kitchen to call my wife (she was on a bus trip to NYC) and then her mother to let them know that we got our power back. Fortunately, my mother-in-law's power was already restored, so she didn't have to make the trip over to our dirty house to shower and warm up.

I spent the next twenty minutes loading the dishwasher, cleaning the sink and cleaning the floor around the pet food dishes. We had put off all this cleaning in order to conserve water. Besides, we had no desire to handle a wet sponge in a cold house for cleaning.

After that, I went back outside to pick up my gloves and bow saw and then cleaned up the remaining loose branches before it got too dark.

I had already thrown out most of the food in the freezer. But there was this one container of bean soup that my wife had put in there just a few days before the outage. I decided to make that my supper, along with some spelt bread toast topped with ghee. I ate in front of the laptop, enjoying the Internet at leisure. I suddenly realized then that I would not be participating in NaBloPoMo this year. (Then again, it's taking place on Blogher. Phooie. I wonder if there's a BlogHim for all us male bloggers? Probably not -- we're too lazy to do something that cool.)

I scooped the cat's litter boxes and eventually took a hot shower after my wife got home.