Power Outage

A big storm rolled through our area recently dumping quite a bit of snow and knocking out power all over. We did not actually lose power when everyone else did, ours was mostly a brown out. We had dim lights, use of the stove, but not the microwave or oven and couldn’t use our pellet stove or TV. We were all home together for a snow day. The kids played games and we all read and hung out. At the end of the day, Dill announced, “Hey, we got through the whole day without technology!” I think he felt like Laura Ingalls!

This reminded me of the first time I ever lived through a power outage. My family lived in Cleveland and I wasn’t more than 3 or 4. It was a big summer storm that knocked out power all over. Our whole neighborhood was without power. On day 2 of the outage, my Dad talked to the neighbor because they were both worried about losing everything in the freezer. They decided to get out their grills and just cook everything. Other neighbors joined in and it became a huge neighborhood party. The outage did not affect us too much since it was summer and when it got dark, everyone just went to bed. On about the 4^th day, Mom was ready to do some laundry and was again talking to some neighbors about how long they would be without power. It suddenly occurred to my mother that the electric company should have given an estimate on how long the outage would last. She asked who had called to notify the company that the power was out and all the neighbors looked at each other and then started laughing when they realized no one had called because they assumed someone else had! Mom called and was told the power would be turned back on within the hour. J