I'm not sure what else to say about this. I guess on the surface when you talk about power being out for awhile, it doesn't seem like a huge deal (it wouldn't have sounded like it to me), but when your house starts heating up like a furnace and everything is so dark (especially in a house with very little natural lighting), and no one in the family is sleeping well because of the heat, and everywhere around you is out of power, too and you have no idea when it's going to come back on, the whole situation feels quite oppressive.
It all started Friday night after our party. We got the kids down quite late for bed and were looking forward to a deep, peaceful sleep (we were feeling pretty exhausted from all the preparations for the party). As we were getting ready to get in bed, the power flickered on and off a few times just as the storm started raging outside (which storm, I should add, had been forecasted as a "chance of showers"). Then the storm raged louder and the power went off...and didn't come back on. Not 2 minutes later, both kids started wailing. We spent the next hour or so trying to get the kids settled back down and asleep, after which we crashed...but not for long. We were up and down all night as Leah and Dallin (mainly Leah) kept waking up because they were so hot and sweaty. I felt so bad that I couldn't make them more comfortable.
It was discouraging to wake up the next morning still thoroughly tired and hot to find that the power was still off. An added disappointment was that Dave had lined up a babysitter for that afternoon so that he could take me out for my birthday...but with the power out, that wasn't going to happen. So we made the most we could of that day. We kept the fridge and freezer doors closed unless we were getting milk out for the kids and we did our best to find ways to cool off. We wanted to go to the community pool, but it was closed because the electronic pumps weren't functioning. We couldn't blow up our pool (no electricity for the air pump) but we could run the hose through the pool fountains, so we tried that out for a bit. Dave was pretty much the only one that enjoyed that...Leah and Dallin for some reason refused to touch it.
After we finally gave up on trying to force the kids to play in the pool fountains, we went inside to wash off in the tub. We had very little hot water left, so the bath was mostly cool, but the kids enjoyed it (as opposed to the cold bath they took later that evening to wash off all the sweat and sunblock and dirt - they were not happy about that and it lasted a few seconds....just long enough to get clean). They especially loved that Dad got in to enjoy it with them!
My parents arrived late that night to a hotel that also had no power, but was being run on a generator. Their room luckily had A/C (not all rooms at the hotel did), and light, but that was pretty much where the amenities end. No hot water, no television, no ability to charge phones or other devices, no elevators (they had to carry their suitcases up four flights), and no functioning key cards, so the hotel had to let them in their room every time. And they never complained! We felt awful about the conditions they were in on their trip and tried to come up with ways to help out (switching hotels or showering at our place), but they insisted they were fine, and they put up happily with all the inconveniences this east coast trip offered them.
By Saturday night, the house had grown so hot that it was unbearable to spend any extended amount of time upstairs (it was 86-90 degrees up there), so we pulled out both pack and plays (we have a travel lite and a regular size) and set them up in the living room on the main floor and in the basement. Leah and Dallin tend to keep each other up when they sleep in a room together (both are super light sleepers, so if one wakes up, they both wake up) so we wanted to sleep them in a way they would be least likely to disturb each other. The arrangement was fairly successful. Dallin went down to sleep at about 8:30 and didn't wake up again (except for once briefly) until about 9:30 am. Leah, on the other hand, was a little apprehensive about her sleeping conditions in the living room. She needed me to lie down next to her until she fell asleep and then slept a couple good hours. But then she started struggling again and it became apparent that she did not want to be left alone in there, so I ended up sleeping most of the night on the floor next to her pack and play. Kindly, Dave also came and joined me on the floor for quite a bit of the night, too. Not ideal conditions, but at least it gave us a little time to close our eyes. But we were so tired the next day, you can imagine how much my heart sank the next morning when we heard on the radio that the power could possibly be out until the end of the week. FIVE MORE DAYS. I didn't even want to think about what that would mean. We were shocked when we went out driving at how much damage there was from the storm. (come to think of it, Dave got some good pictures of some of the damage...I'll try to post that some other time). There was a row of power lines that had fallen completely over - the poles had snapped completely in half, and the rest were leaning totally on the side. Crazy!
Anyway, we spent most of Sunday with my parents and started discussing plans of action if we were to head into more days without power. When we headed back to our home that afternoon, we were shocked, and overwhelmingly grateful to find that our power was back on. I have NEVER felt so grateful for light, air conditioning, and a running fridge. I was SO grateful to put the kids down for a nap in a cool, comfortable room. I was so grateful to take a lukewarm shower (as opposed to ice cold). This whole experience was a real wake-up call. Luckily we came out okay, but it definitely made me anxious to get ourselves ready for any other natural disasters that could come our way. It was so frustrating to feel so dependent on things outside of our power (internet, electricity). I learned a lot from the experience and will definitely be working on being more prepared for unforeseen emergencies in our home...this was about as unexpected as they come. We lived through 3 blizzards during snowmageddon in 2009-2010 and sat on the edge of a much-hyped hurricane Irene 2011 and never saw a single flicker of power in our town home. Suddenly this storm blows threw that was forecasted as a chance of showers, and it left us without power for days. I don't want to get caught off guard again!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment