Mike
had had his shower and was resting before supper as is his wont. I was just
ready to step into the shower when suddenly the world was plunged into
darkness. Fortunately, my battery-operated candles still shine brightly from
4:00 p.m. to midnight, so Mike brought one to the bathroom for me.
We weren’t in bad shape really. There was still plenty of hot water, and Mike had started the evening fire in the little stove. A potato baking in the oven was close to done. I had made a salad and pudding for dessert. Mike moved my candles (sets of three) from the window to the kitchen, and they gave off enough light for me to finish cooking and then they graced the table for our supper. Meanwhile, the winter storm warning had come to pass. It was cold and snowing.
As
it happened, Avista (our utility) had warned of outages this winter, so we
brought the generator to town when we closed the farmhouse. And Mike was on it!
It was slow to start, but he got it going. He plugged in the microwave so that
I could finish warming supper dishes. Then he plugged in the wood stove and the
TV set. At 7:47, as we watched the news, the electricity was restored.
Early in the afternoon, a pick-up hit a pole and sheared it off about half a mile from us. Apparently the outage occurred as Avista was fitting the transformer to the new pole around 6:15. Our household was one of a reported 1,400 without electricity. KW
It sounds like a fun evening and you were even prepared for a longer outage.
ReplyDeleteEven though we were at a certain level of preparedness, we were glad when electricity was restored. My brother Chuck is much better prepared than we are, but we could get along for a while. The electricity used to go off with more regularity than we experience these days, and my mother's readiness was a drawer full of candles.
ReplyDeleteWe've been dimming the lights and lighting a taper candle at dinnertime at Silas' request. It's kind of fun. We have not lost power at a time that it's inconvenienced us since we've lived here. We've had some wind this year! I guess we live in kind of a protected spot.
ReplyDeleteWe've had some strong wind gusts, and I discovered we had no hot water this evening. Fortunately I discovered this at the kitchen sink, not as I stepped into the shower. Mike re-lit the tank, but we had to postpone showers while the water heated. Eating by candlelight sounds like fun.
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