Powerless

It is truly amazing what a little bit of ice can do and how quickly it can paralyze you. What I initially shrugged off as a minor storm that would only delay school on Friday turned out to be much bigger and four days later, it is still kicking our sorry behinds.

Do you know what it is like to watch your laundry and dishes pile up around endless darkness? Of course, the Stanleys were well prepared for the storm. We did not put buckets out to catch all the rain water or fill our bathtubs with water so we could accomplish flushing the toilets because we weren't anticipating such devastation that would leave us so....powerless.

If we are saving money on electricity and heat, we have exceeded the budget that isn't even a budget to pay for flashlights and food and entertainment. Actually, make that ONE flashlight because by the time we got to Walmart the cheap ones had long since been sold out and only the $20 LED flashlights remained. I purchased two before realizing the price for each and only opened one, intending to return the other.

Our next door neighbors scored a generator yesterday and after failing at hooking up a water line from their house to ours due to a broken spicket (thanks to the boys, of course), I resorted to filling two trash barrels and several 5-gallon buckets. For reasons I still don't know, I can access the internet from their house and received a message from a friend that we could borrow their generator they no longer needed since power had been restored for them early this morning. But apparently I got the message too late because when she didn't hear from me, she assumed I didn't need it and loaned it out to another family. The boys relayed the message to me that she had called back saying the "generator was worn out" and I translated that to mean they didn't want to loan it out after all, because how does a generator get worn out anyway? But the boys had misinterpreted the message and it was actually that the generator had been loaned out. But crews were seen on the street where this family lives so we may still get lucky, just not right now. Then again, another friend offered us her house for the afternoon to relax and take showers and on our way over, there were crews on our road. I naturally stopped to inquire with the officer directing traffic whether it was a tree or utility crew, and he said it was a utility crew from Canada. Perhaps we will have power restored sooner than we have been hearing, which is several more days.

In the meantime, school is cancelled today and tomorrow and if all roads are cleared, school could resume on Wednesday. Apparently a decision will be made at a 10 AM meeting tomorrow (Tuesday). Then again, how can they have school if the high school is being used as a Red Cross shelter?

But let's look at the good that has come out of all of this because there is always a silver lining, right? We have never spent more time together as a family. The boys can tell their kids the stories we told them about events from our childhood. They now know how my sister Karen poked my eye from a rusty fence spoke trying to claim a frog I spotted first. They know how our rabbit, Bunkie, escaped from his cage and met an unfortunate death being run over. They know how I narrowly escaped getting run over myself from a Mack truck on my eleventh birthday. And they heard stories about their grandfather in the Navy.

So, just as soon as we have power restored to our home, or immediately after I am finished thanking God for such a gift), I will post pictures I have taken. Until then, pray for us and pray that we don't all go over the edge and that nobody dares to try to steal our neighbor's generator in the middle of the night. Yes, people are desperate and evil enough that they are actually doing this.

And it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. The spirit is truly in the air, hanging from tree limbs and electical wires.