Mother Nature had other ideas.
I woke up at 2:00 a.m. to a completely dark room. No streetlights outside, no luminous numbers on my alarm clock. I bumped my way downstairs to get my phone, set the alarm, and went back to bed. It was noisy outside; lots of branches were breaking, sounding like gunshots. I snuggled back under the covers, fairly certain that I'd get a call from my school snow chain saying that school was cancelled.
However, I awoke to my phone alarm at seven. Looking outside, I was surprised. It was icy, and we had a large pine tree down in the back yard; it looked like it had exploded about two-thirds of the way up. I got ready for school, and headed out a little early. I drove slowly on the slick roads, marveling at the ice and the downed trees. I stopped at the Dunkin' Donuts next to school. "I can't believe we have school today!" I said to the woman at the drive-through, and drove away.
I turned the corner and put my signal on to turn into the school...but the gates were locked. What the...? Why hadn't I gotten a call? "I guess we DON'T have school today," I sighed, and turned back. I retraced my steps through the Dunkin' Donuts, where I picked up some coffee and a doughnut for my husband, and headed back home.
I arrived home to find my husband on his cell phone (the house phone was out, which explained why I never got my phone call), talking with his best friend. They were trying to figure out the most likely place to find a generator. When our power is out, our sump pump doesn't function. No pump + wet weather = bad news at the Throwing Spoons headquarters. The two of them began calling around; the closest store that had them in stock was about 45 minutes away. My in-laws, being closer to the store, headed over to hosey a generator for us; I took off in Camilla, the Spoonsmobile.
I arrived at Costco to find my mother-in-law guarding a generator with her life. They were checking on another model for her, but she wasn't letting that one go 'til she knew they had the other one for her. They eventually brought it out, we checked out, and I hightailed it home.
I arrived not a moment too soon. By the time my husband got the generator hooked up, we had four inches of water in our cellar. We were a fraction of an inch from losing our water heater, and if the water level had risen another inch, we might have lost the furnace. He managed to hook the furnace into the generator, so we had heat all weekend, and we had power for the fridge, and to charge our cell phones, and one light. I pushed my luck with the toaster oven one night; otherwise I was confined to cooking on our gas stove.
I briefly considered mixing my cookies by hand, but I discovered that even if I did, baking was just not an option. Though we have a gas range, the oven controls are electronic. There was no way to light our oven, nor control the temperature. I resorted to wrapping all of my Christmas gifts instead; baking will have to happen this weekend instead.
Our power came on early yesterday evening. I went around the house, singing, turning lights on and off for the sheer fun of it. I also have a theory that whomever first coined the phrase, "Silence is golden," must have lived with a gasoline-powered generator just outside the back of the house for five days. It was lovely falling asleep to the sound of nothing. Never before have I been so appreciative of our quiet neighborhood.
1 spoons thrown:
I'm sorry that your cookie extravaganza didn't work out, but I'm glad all are safe (what did the cat think of this?) and that you have such a good mother-in-law.
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