Ice Storm

*digs through iTunes library to find the right background music for the coming entry…Christmas collection, perfect! And begins jotting the ideas bubbling through brain*

I need music to write, I try to find a theme to the stuff floating around in my head, and when I find it, it writes itself.

We had an ice storm this past week. Bad one too, it cut the power on Thursday night around 10 pm. It was restored today, on Wednesday around 7 am. The days in between are the focus of my tale. I am smiling as I type, “Let it Snow” is playing in the background. I can tell you quite honestly I was praying for it not to snow.

Thursday night I lay in bed listening to the sound of trees cracking in half and breaking. It came from every direction, all directions, it was loud, thunderous and scared me to death. I was sure a tree was going to fall on the house. None did. I jumped every time one sounded close. My jumping of course woke the poor man I was sleeping on, and when he’d finally get to deep rest another would crash nearby making me jump yet again. He’d pat me, try to comfort me but it was getting later and he had to get up for work which was far more important than him trying to bring me comfort, the man needed sleep. Since I couldn’t sleep, power or no I had to find something to keep me occupied, and so I got up around midnight. I arranged the recipes I had on index cards from my Gram into different types of food so once the power was restored I could type them up for the recipe book Christmas gifts. That took a few hours to do by candle light. After that I lay on the floor with the dogs and we all tried to relax. The Pugs were quite relaxed and snoring happily, Kaia my lovely Foxhound and I were quite miserable and jumped at every cracking tree that fell. Finally sleep came to us as well around 4:30 am.

Matt woke for work a half an hour later, and carried me off to bed. I awoke at 8 o’clock, since I had the day off, only to find him reading in the office. The road was entirely impassable. He’d need Inspector Gadget’s car to get to work, there were around 200-300 downed trees in the road and those were just the ones he could see from the top of our hill where the driveway meets the road. He wasn’t going to work anytime soon. That made me very happy. I promptly grabbed a book from our library and laid down next to Kaia and started reading, only to find that she and I were exhausted, and we both fell asleep on my book, her head on one side, mine on the other.

I woke up around noon warm, cozy and curled up with Kaia under a soft down throw. She liked the half of it she was snuggled under as well. She yawned at me and I yawned back. I looked around the office, and began to notice the subtle migration of things of import that had begun. Books were on Matt’s desk, some small bags for trash, tissues, dog treats, flashlights, all the things most vital when the power goes out. The door was closed to the office which I found odd since it’s never closed. It is however the smallest room of the house. The blinds were up and I could see the devastation this storm had brought. Trees, tree limbs, chunks of trees that had literally blown apart were simply everywhere. Inches upon inches of ice clung to everything outside. The weathermen had said “AM ice, clearing to rain by noon” so no one was prepared for what hit us.

It became apparent when Matt finally got a cell phone signal that the fact they declared it a “state of emergency” there was no way the power was coming back quickly. This poses a bit of a problem. We do not have a heat source aside from our furnace. When they poured the foundation they forgot, literally, to pour the feet for the chimney. It was one of those moments in life in which I wish I could have been there before they had finished stacking the wall pieces to pour and said something, but I was at work. It’s too late to go back now. So there we were, the five of us in an 11 by 15 room, and the house was 68 degrees. Our water is controlled by the pump which requires electricity, the furnace is oil run, but again needs power. So we have no heat, no water and no power, and by news reports they say it’ll be Monday at least before we do have these things.

We decided to make it an adventure. I laughed as I looked around the room, it wasn’t really that long ago, at least in my mind’s eye that we had an apartment about the same size as the room we were in. Matt and I talked for hours and eventually we both fell asleep. The house was warm enough, and we had our dogs and each other, so it was more than comfortable.

Saturday morning came, and I found Matt asleep on the spare twin bed we keep downstairs that he had laid next to the loveseat I was sleeping on. The Pugs were curled up with me and Kaia with him. He doesn’t fit on the loveseat, not for sleeping anyway, and surely not with me as well. I was under about 5 blankets, he had 2. He’d been busy while I was snoozing apparently. I looked around and more things had migrated into the room. It became almost like when you’re a kid and you build a fort, all the cool stuff goes in the fort. This became our fort. We decided we could use some food, so we went to the store and bought the necessities of a power outage, candles, soda, peanut butter, jelly, bread and bananas. We headed home, and the temperature was 54 degrees in our house. We or rather Matt had insulated the entire plumbing of the house when we built it. We had spent a few months in Matt’s parent’s basement while we were fixing the first house we bought. Their ceiling was unfinished, and in the summer those pipes overhead sweat, and they drip all over the place. There would be no dripping here. This almost meant the likelihood of them freezing was minimal.

It was a great day actually, while cold, we played Scrabble, I won, Trivial Pursuit, he won, and we talked. We talked about all sorts and manner and types of things. It was a lot of fun. As the temperature outside dropped to 8 degrees, the house began to cool further. By the time Sunday morning rolled around it was 41 degrees in the house.

When I woke up shivering my lips had a blue cast to them. My hands were ice and my pinky toes were purple. Matt took one look at me and got his “man with a mission” look to him. He began calling to find out when Home Depot was going to open. It wouldn’t be for another 2 hours, it was still only 4 am. He had that purpose filled expression to him as he sat there. You could see the wheels turning and then he told me to get ready to go. I put my jacket and shoes on, he brought in the leashes for the dogs and in two minutes the five of us were in the car. We went to my in laws, they were in Las Vegas. My sister in law and her fiancé are staying there to tend the house while they’re there. They have a second house there and summer here. Her fiancé has a house two towns over that they are renovating, that house has power so they went there. They kept the wood stove going at my in laws though to ensure there was no pipe freezing there. So while the “man on a mission” drove I had no idea where we were going, or why. We pulled into the driveway and he motioned me to follow. When he has these moments where he is driven to such purpose filled action I must admit I find it incredibly sexy. He’s on the task. I gleefully follow wherever it is we’re going, since well that’s really all I can do, and I know he’s got a good idea which I will eventually find out the details to. We went down to the barn and he pulled out a generator. It didn’t work. “We need to find someone that will fix this today.” I nodded and he pushed it back to the Jeep. The puppies were snoozing happily in the warmth of the car and on the blankets he had put in the back for them. We lifted the generator into the back of the Jeep and he drove back home to drop the dogs off.

Dogs returned to the office we began sorting out what we needed to make this work. We pulled out extension cords, and started arranging things so that all that would be required would be to bring this back, fill it with gas, and plug it in. I dug out the strip heater we had from years ago. The thing can heat about 500 square feet in half an hour. It cost us a fortune when we bought it about 18 years ago, but we needed heat and that was all we had. The thing still put out more heat than Heatmiser from the Christmas cartoon. Everything was set; our fort was becoming a small castle with all the goodies we now had stored in there. We had now added a coffee pot for Matt, more treats for the pups, a light since the flickering candles were giving us both a headache, and more flashlights since neither of us could find one when we needed it. I also found a surge protector and put that in there as well, generators cause surges, best to be safe.

We drove around and I recalled seeing a sign for small engine repairs. We pulled in to the fellow’s driveway and he came out. We explained the situation (house 41 degrees and dropping, generator not working, must be fixed now) It would be two maybe three hours tops before the snow was supposed to start and the temperature was going to be sinking well into the negatives shortly after that. He fixed that generator right then and there. The carburetor was clogged. I’m good with cars, old cars that is, not the new ones, but generators are well beyond my area of expertise. He had it fixed and humming in 45 minutes. Best $100 I ever spent let me tell you. We got gas on the way home, and we then had some chance of making it through without freezing.

We set up the generator, hooked up the strip heater and the coffee pot. We made some pb&j sandwiches, and sighed with relief as the room heated up. The Galileo thermometer we have slowly dropped the little orbs letting us know where we were on that front. We watched it rather intently for nearly 30 minutes in silence. The room took about an hour to hit 70 degrees. I looked at Matt, and he looked back at me. I grinned looking at the surge strip, then at the small flat screen and DVD player we have in here. We spent the rest of the night watching movies. The dogs were happy and we were warm.

Monday and Tuesday passed much the same way, movies, and reading and snoozing with the dogs. Matt ran out for gasoline and water from the spring. We found out that both our Foxhound and our smallest Pug, both females, do not like total darkness. They’re both quite used to having night lights all over the house. I have them stuffed all over the place. I can’t see in the dark well. I end up bruising parts of my body I need. To prevent myself from slamming into things I have nightlights all over the house. They turn on when it’s dark, turn off when it’s not all by themselves. Matt laughed as they continued crying for well over 45 minutes in the darkness. “All the females in this house are afraid of the dark…” Of course I rebutted with “I’m not afraid I just like to use a nightlight.” It’s a song lyric from a song that he says reminds him of me, Her Eyes by Pat Monahan. We ended up lighting one of the big jar candles for the dogs. They settled right down and both promptly fell asleep.

Tuesday we went to Matt’s parent’s house to shower. They had their power back. While we were gone all the other houses on the street had their power restored, except ours. Matt was once again a man on a mission. This time however he looked angry too. In times like this while I still find him sexy when he’s like that I don’t follow, I let him do his thing. He left, I had no idea where, but he was off. He went down to the fire station to find out where the guys were from the electric company. They had left for the day. He told the fire chief that he needed to speak with the head fellow the very next morning first thing. He came home still irritated but at least somewhat more relaxed since he had done all he could to rectify the situation.

Today they finally turned the power back on. He met them outside as they started their shift, and asked them to turn the power on. They forgot. They saw the light from the generator, and apparently figured we had power. Oops. He spent the next few hours filling pipes, playing with the furnace and doing other husband sorts of things that husbands do with pipes and furnaces and such. Within about an hour after running hot water, the stove, drying the load of laundry I had just washed, and running the hot water in the showers, the house had begun to climb in temperature from 36 degrees to the mid 60’s. The office was still 70.

All in all while the ice storm was really bad, and we had quite literally massive devastation we learned a few things. Firstly we learned that we live in a town in which trees in the road are fair game, and any and all that own a woodstove will gladly cut up everything in their path and stuff it in their truck to take home to burn. Secondly we learned we are perhaps the only town like this since all the other towns still have huge piles of downed trees on the roadside. Third we learned that we enjoy spending time with each other no matter the weather, conditions and can have one hell of a lot of fun in a small room by ourselves doing nothing but throwing socks at each other. Fourth, we also learned you can live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and bananas, but Chinese food tastes really good when you’re cold. Fifth we learned weathermen have the only job in the world where they can be wrong 95% of the time and not get fired. Last we learned that no matter what adventure you’re on, if you share it with someone you love, the trip is always worthwhile, even if it’s cold while you travel.

This ice storm was said to be worse than anything seen to date in this area. To me, it will be an interesting week that while freezing cold was spent in very worthwhile albeit sometimes silly ways with my family. Oh, we also learned where the saying “three dog night” comes from, and if you’re ever cold, take your dog to bed with you, they’re like little mobile furnaces. Put three of them in bed with you and you can make it through 40 degree weather with only cold pinky toes and lips.