Wagons Ho! Or

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I would have been a bad pioneer!

Really bad pioneer. Cranky too. Last week our electricity went out. It happened right after my next-door neighbor complained about the new electric rates and I had a chat with Pam from One Spoiled Cat about not having power outages. The electricity gods got me back. It was awful.

Ok it was only six hours, but you don’t know how long it will be. Maybe a few hours? Days? How extreme do I prep? Move to a hotel? Buy a house in a different area? Buy a generator? A cemetery plot?

The weather is cold here so as soon as the power went out, I started to get cold. It didn’t matter that the room was the same temperature it had been 10 minutes before, I was cold. Life threatening cold. Close to 911 cold. (Yes I’m a bit of a drama queen. Learned that from my cat Sasha. At the time she was complaining because her heating pad wasn’t heating.)

My fingers don’t always get the message from my brain. Why do we turn the light switch on as soon as we walk into a room when the power is out? Muscle memory or sheer stupidity.

Since I had time to kill (until I died from the cold), I thought I’d go on the computer. Oops. Electricity. That happened a lot. We were able to turn on the fireplace, so we had one room that stayed warm. I snuggled up with my Kindle, a fleece throw and three cats for the duration. The beloved husband was at the other end of the sofa minus cats and throws with his Kindle.

It wasn’t too bad. Around midnight we decided to sleep in the family room. We could leave the fireplace going and it would be cozy except the furniture isn’t made for sleeping. By the time we lugged the pillows and extra blankets in place, the power came back on. It was after 1 a.m. before I got to sleep in my own bed, and my back was full of aches and pains.

Obviously, I wouldn’t make a good camper either. Nor would I do well in a war-torn country. How do those people sleep? The experience left me with all sorts of gratitude for a lot of stuff I hadn’t thought about in a long time (probably since the last outage).

Life is good.

63 thoughts on “Wagons Ho! Or”

  2. Having a power outage during the winter is not a pleasant experience. Fortunately, we have only experienced a few prolonged power outages in our area, and none of them occurred during the winter. The longest one we had lasted about six hours, but we were asleep for a significant portion of that time. When we woke up in the morning, we realized we had no power, which meant no coffee. However, since I’m an avid camper, I quickly grabbed the camp stove and prepared camp coffee and dry cereal. I didn’t want to open the fridge because I was uncertain how long the power outage would last. I’m glad you had your cats to keep you warm. I can imagine my cat finding the most comfortable spot in the house and curling up in the blankets. On the other hand, I would be left to fend for myself.

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  3. I agree with you that not knowing how long the power outage will last is what makes the situation so stressful. I worry about refrigerators and freezers, and I don’t like to be cold–not even a little. Ha! And no, I don’t want to camp either. I’m glad you made it through your long ordeal. I can’t even roll my eyes at you–I feel the same!

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  5. Having lived through some earthquakes and other power-loss disasters, I’m grateful for our solar panels and battery. Now I don’t even notice when we lose electricity–until a neighbor calls and asks if we still have power. I’ve had a few folks camp out in my dining room with their computers in order to charge and work remotely. At least in SoCal, we don’t worry about freezing?

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  6. For sure no fun to be without electricity! Double no fun when it’s 95 degrees and 100% humidity which is what it is like when a hurricane roars in. I would make a bad pioneer because I need a bathroom… a bathroom of my very own. With all the conveniences modern bathrooms have these days. No shower. I need a comfy tub to fit my five foot three inch self. No camping ever never. So true about what you say about finally finding something that works out comfort wise and the power comes back on! Always appreciated though!!!

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    • We don’t have as many summer outages but heat and humidity wouldn’t be good either. The next morning, there were blankets all around and on the kitchen island there was every flashlight we owned with most needing batteries. There were two with batteries that had corroded and oozed. We’ve cleaned all that up and all flashlight have operating batteries but I can guarantee that for the next outage all the batteries will again be dead!

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  7. I do the same thing. Flick unworking switches, grab the laptop… My cat Suki has been glued to an outdoor heated hut I had bought for strays since I put it together. She would DIE if it stopped heating. Funeral services to take place shortly after.

    She has taken it as her own little apartment and I had to buy a second one for the outdoor strays. I think the outage would affect her more, actually. You would suck being Laura Engalls!!! I would, too. Come on Spring.

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    • No frilly bonnets for me either! Or swishy skirts. My neighbor has 3 heated huts for 3 strays that live in her yard. They use them all the time! We have an indoor cat heating pad and the cats rotate on it. Sasha had control when the power went out. She was good for a while, then she got cranky too.

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  8. Well Kate you already know how I feel about power outages! I absolutely am spoiled and I know it. It really does make you think about those who have NO electricity EVER though doesn’t it. Sigh. I’m with you. I’m spoiled and I admit it. Creature comforts have become more important to me too as I’ve aged. In our power outage blankets were my best friends!

    Hugs, Pam

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  11. No, I wouldn’t be a good candidate for “roughing it” – nope. I’m glad it was a short duration. We once had no power in the Winter for one week solid. It was awful and I was never so cold in my life. No hotels anywhere to be had as the whole area was without power. It was before Marge as I am sure she would have brought over warm food or drinks made on her gas grill.

    We are just easing out of still another Polar Vortex event. Monday it was -10 to -20 below zero real feel and a huge water main (54 inches wide) broke in the middle of the night in Detroit. The pictures were just amazing. This main pipe was almost 100 years old and water gushed out and instantly froze. It froze around homeowners’ cars that were parked on the street and they are likely ruined. It flooded basements for many of the 200 homes that were affected. I can’t imagine … the City is putting people up in hotels and providing transportation until it’s fixed (two weeks if they’re lucky) … how awful!

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    • That is awful! We’ve never had an outage that long. At our last house we had one that was for a day or so but it was in fall and much warmer. The big worry was the food in the freezer.

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      • We had food spoilage in power outages too. As if the cold and/or heat (we also had a one-week power outage in July as well) was not bad enough. We used to lose power a lot and once our energy provider had crews here from Indiana working on our power. The young man knocked on the door and asked my mom to check the lights to see if they were working and they were. My mom said “we always lose our power.” He told her that he noticed something irregular and so he fixed that and hoped to remedy it for good. Good for him as we went the longest time without issues – a storm is one thing, these were regular power outages and we lost a fridge due to the brownouts.

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    • That’s a long time. In the 90s the local power company stopped doing tree trimming. By the 2000s, there were a lot of outages (some long) from trees and the Public Utility Commission fined them big time. They now trim around transmission and power lines and upgrade equipment regularly. Companies do not automatically do good things unless they are forced to.

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  13. Power cuts are always inconvenient. I still vividly recall when my gas furnace went out during a blizzard. We had to sleep in the living room with a small space heater with a squawky dramatic cockatiel and two dogs. I can look back now and chuckle but those nights without heat were beastly miserable.

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  15. Ha. Yeah, when you don’t know how long it’s going to be, it’s scary. We used to be much better prepared when we lived in Florida due to the threat of hurricanes. I watch these youtube videos of people who live off-grid. I don’t know why, but they fascinate me. They live in tiny cabins but they do have a bunch of gadgets that give them power to their houses. Glad you’re no longer electricity-free.

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  17. No electricity really reminds us how dependent we are on it and how life as we know it just comes to a screeching halt. There were about 3,000 in the state without power one day this week, and I was glad when I heard they were fully restored before end of day. Glad you’re back to normal conditions like lights, heat, computers, hot water, etc.

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  20. Our thermostat, which controls the furnace, decided to give out about a month ago, around 3:00 in the afternoon. I was scrambling around to see how many pet heating devices I had – we still had electricity but no heat. Luckily the company we work with on heat/cooling came out about 5:30 pm and replaced the dead thermostat. Crisis averted, but I sure was concerned that the pets especially were going to have a very cold night. Temps were freezing then.

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    • This week has been so dang cold. I was worried that an “overnight outage” would have brought the house temperature way down. Somehow the cats knew what was going on. All three scrambled to the warm family room and found a place to sleep.

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  21. Funny, we had a power cut today and I was immediately on the phone to the national grid emergency line.
    Dinner was/wasn’t cooking and we were hungry. By the time I’d gone through the option menus and left my number, we were back in business, except the cooker didn’t work. Fuse box OK, so a quick reset of oven controls. Must be a safety feature, if power goes off, shut down. Eventually had dinner half an hour later than planned.
    Glad to know you are reconnected.

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    • At least that wasn’t a long time! Fortunately we were finishing eating dinner and since I clean up when I cook, there wasn’t much to do except put the dirty plates and silverware in the dishwasher for the next run. Dan called the power company but everything is AI now. We got the power back 3 hours earlier than the estimate which we have found is bogus. It could go either way of the estimate.

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