Wednesday, July 19, 2006

A new appreciation for electricity

My brother recently blogged about how he loved the storm we had. I found it terrifying. With TJ out of town, tall spindly white pines surrounding the house, and no power i was miserable and a wee bit stressed. I quickly realized how much i love unnatural light, humming of appliances, and water being pumped into my house. It didn't take me long to realize that i was not in a good situation. At least i had my cats.

The morning after the storm, i had summer school. I had slept hardly at all the night before because i didn't have an alram clock with me that was battery operated. I had to take the old car because i didn't know how to open the garage door manually (although i didn't try to attempt it, i think i could have figured it out.) I took my toothbrush, washcloth, deoderant, and soap to school early. As i drove, i passed several down trees and tons of limbs in the road. I arrived at school only to find we were out of power there as well. What a miserable day this was going to be. We only had a cordless phone, so i promptly bought a corded phone. (a cell phone would have been handy, too) The freezer started oozing stuff from cracks and crevises. Meijers was out of jugs of water, so i bought bottled water to put in the cats' dish and for myself. I kept running up to meijer to use their bathroom. . . not the most pleasant experience i had, but i couldn't help it. Something was not right with my stomache. I came so close to locking myself out of the house. Normally i am not too concerned with this because we have a punch code for the garage door, but that wouldn't work without power. Our house key is on my new saturn key ring, but that was trapped in the garage. So, with my flashlight, i headed for the door with the Intrigue keys. Wiggled the door handle to make sure it was locked and started to pull it closed. Then, something. . . i don't know what, made me remember that i needed the other set of keys too so i could get back into my dark house. After that i decieded to unlock the basement walkout door, just in case i had a lapse in memory. I n the evening, i went to take a shower at my friends' house, ate chinese, wathced The Last Comic Standing as cool fans circulated the air, and then headed home. . . clean, refreshed, and fed.

Our power finally came back at about 11 last night. I cried tears of happiness as i walked around blowing out all the candles. I was able to fall asleep to the humming of power and the cool air from air conditioning. Life is Good.


There is supposed to be another nasty storm tonight. . .

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Storm was bad here too, but I was at work in Manistee which the storm mostly avoided. But spent yesterday and some of today with the chain saw as three large trees and a number of smaller ones came down. One large one near the house would have done a lot of damage to house and deck, but fell the other way with the top third in the pond.
Your stomach problems could be from Glucophage...it tears mine up since increasing the dosage. Dad

Anonymous said...

Wasn't that storm just so scary??? It took me over two hours to get home from work... I had to pull over at Meijers in Standale to wait it out. The lightning was so bad it was like trying to drive with a giant strobe light. It was hailing and then I finally tried to drive off and very nearly got stuck in a huge lake. I couldn't figure out why all the people in front of me were just sitting there, then splosh! a lake. I was so happy to be home.