Day #5 Dawns
Still no word on electricity restoration.
My battery powered alarm clock did not alarm this morning (I even rechecked the settings after a startled wake up), so Delena missed the bus. Eric is going to drop her off on his way up to Auburn for a business meeting, but yes indeed, she will be late. This is the first time she's missed the bus ever and she's halfway through her sophomore year, so that's not bad.
Evidently, there are some things I should clarify, just so everyone out there isn't thinking less of me.
First, having lived up here in the mountains for 4 years now and knowing that power outages and blizzards and the like do occur, Eric and I are not unprepared for such an event. We have a cast iron wood stove that heats the 2 main downstairs rooms relatively well. We have a propane grill for cooking indoors, as well as being able to cook to a certain degree on the wood stove. We also have a charcoal grill outside. We have a Coleman lantern that can be used outside for light, a huge emergency supply of candles and battery operated flashlights. Short of owning a generator, which we do not, there is not really anything we could do to be MORE prepared for this experience than we are. Truly, we are not little children up here running into walls in the dark, stunned by our own ineptitude because we thought we were bulletproof against such an inevitability. You prepare for such things when you live up here (unless you're really, tremendously stupid), but that certainly does not make them any more convenient when they happen.
On a different level, of course it has occurred to me, more than once even, that there is some great higher purpose as to why I am now on Day #5 of no power. (Have you people not MET me?) When it gets dark between 3-4pm and doesn't get light again until around 9am, you have plenty of time to think about such things. I have not waxed all philosophical here because my generator time is very limited and I use it just to check in, share a few facts with people who might be interested and then get offline again. I assure you that all deeper implications to this situation are being very carefully considered at length and ad nauseum. Just because I don't ruminate about them here, doesn't mean they aren't happening.
The idea of there being some grand purpose to this power outage or the knowledge that others have it profoundly worse than I do or assuring me that if I had hundreds (or thousands) of extra dollars to invest in a quality generator system, things would be much better, doesn't change the fact that this is a profound pain in the ass.
I am doing my best to remain positive and just roll with this. Any frustration I feel does not make things easier for my family, so I am doing my best to put all that aside and remain optimistic and stalwart.
As of this moment, there is no word on when our power will be restored. The Governator has declared a state of emergency and created little Superbowl-ish shelters for us to go to and PG&E is calling in crews from out of state to work around the clock to get everyone back on the grid. Unfortunately, none of them are working in MY town.
Go take a shower and think of me... not in a weird way, but as a sacrament.
My battery powered alarm clock did not alarm this morning (I even rechecked the settings after a startled wake up), so Delena missed the bus. Eric is going to drop her off on his way up to Auburn for a business meeting, but yes indeed, she will be late. This is the first time she's missed the bus ever and she's halfway through her sophomore year, so that's not bad.
Evidently, there are some things I should clarify, just so everyone out there isn't thinking less of me.
First, having lived up here in the mountains for 4 years now and knowing that power outages and blizzards and the like do occur, Eric and I are not unprepared for such an event. We have a cast iron wood stove that heats the 2 main downstairs rooms relatively well. We have a propane grill for cooking indoors, as well as being able to cook to a certain degree on the wood stove. We also have a charcoal grill outside. We have a Coleman lantern that can be used outside for light, a huge emergency supply of candles and battery operated flashlights. Short of owning a generator, which we do not, there is not really anything we could do to be MORE prepared for this experience than we are. Truly, we are not little children up here running into walls in the dark, stunned by our own ineptitude because we thought we were bulletproof against such an inevitability. You prepare for such things when you live up here (unless you're really, tremendously stupid), but that certainly does not make them any more convenient when they happen.
On a different level, of course it has occurred to me, more than once even, that there is some great higher purpose as to why I am now on Day #5 of no power. (Have you people not MET me?) When it gets dark between 3-4pm and doesn't get light again until around 9am, you have plenty of time to think about such things. I have not waxed all philosophical here because my generator time is very limited and I use it just to check in, share a few facts with people who might be interested and then get offline again. I assure you that all deeper implications to this situation are being very carefully considered at length and ad nauseum. Just because I don't ruminate about them here, doesn't mean they aren't happening.
The idea of there being some grand purpose to this power outage or the knowledge that others have it profoundly worse than I do or assuring me that if I had hundreds (or thousands) of extra dollars to invest in a quality generator system, things would be much better, doesn't change the fact that this is a profound pain in the ass.
I am doing my best to remain positive and just roll with this. Any frustration I feel does not make things easier for my family, so I am doing my best to put all that aside and remain optimistic and stalwart.
As of this moment, there is no word on when our power will be restored. The Governator has declared a state of emergency and created little Superbowl-ish shelters for us to go to and PG&E is calling in crews from out of state to work around the clock to get everyone back on the grid. Unfortunately, none of them are working in MY town.
Go take a shower and think of me... not in a weird way, but as a sacrament.