When The Lights Go OUT!

We’ve been unplugged lately. Unplugged from media of sorts. Media stressors for the most part.

We still watch movies in the evenings and on occasion The Travel Channel…ok….I DVR all of Tony B’s, Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, and Sam Brown’s travel adventures. But for the most part, after my ER trip and my adrenals hitting bottom….not much help from the Epi they shot through my veins….well, we just unplugged to reduce the stress that we already have in our lives.

As we were being unplugged the other night…..a storm rolled in. Not your typical storm. A snow storm with lighting and LOTS and LOTS of snow in a hurry. The Hired Hand listens to the radio and informed me that they were predicting upwards of 8″ for our area, so he came home early to avoid the icy mix and planned to go in late the next morning after he cleared the cars and driveway. We shrugged it off and sat down to John Adams and ate a Josie brisket with kale, carrots and taters. After a couple hours we looked out the window and declared that it had only been snowing for a couple hours and we had upwards of 8 inches ALREADY! Still another 4-5 hours to go!!!!

YIKES! This was a very heavy snow. About that time, the lights started flickering and it dawned on us that we might lose power.

Run, hurry, fill the bathtub. Fill 3 gallons of drinking water. Fill more water for the livestock. Charge my nebulizer battery…and relax since I can always sit in the car and use the battery for power. Find the flashlights. Get the wind up radio. Find the oil for the oil lamps. Where the heck did I put those extra wicks? Where the heck was that box of oil from Y2K? Hang some blankets to keep cold rooms cold, since our only source of backup heat is a new Lennox gas stove…..STILL sitting in the foyer!!! YIKES! It’s cold out and we don’t have an alternative source of heat yet. BUT we do have our new little Brown Works gas range that is NON-electric.

Sure enough….about 9pm, after multiple fire work displays from transformers blowing somewhere and the sky turning green…the lights went OUT!

The Farmer’s Daughter declared that she had plenty of entertainment just watching us hustle! We decided that we would be toasty warm snuggled up in our beds for the night.

I layered on my Long Jane’s under my Pjammies, put on some socks and prayed for a couple hot flashes!I like a cool bedroom to sleep in anyway, and thankfully we never got cold during the night. The house never fell below 58* which is pretty darn good. I’m guessing all that insulation work we did 25 yrs ago paid off. The next morning we used our little Brown Works oven on a low setting to provide just enough heat that we kept the house at 60* most of the day.

From listening to the news on my hand crank radio, I had visions of what it must of looked like on the interstates and roadways. This storm came in so fast and furious that workers didn’t have enough time to get home in front of the storm. We live in the throws of Washington DC and most of the roads coming from and going to downtown are usually crammed to the brim every day at rush hour. Apparently the OPM didn’t announce to the millions of govt workers that they could go home early until it was too late. Trucks were jack-knifing and interstates and parkways were jammed. People sat in their cars for 14-18 hours, the snow was piling up and the plows couldn’t get through….they ran out of gas, batteries died and they abandoned their cars. I could only listen but had a pretty clear picture of things….It was A MESS! (I still haven’t seem images of this mess but it must of really been awful) We went to bed, shut off our flashlights and prayed for those abandoned in their cars over night, for our neighbors and for ourselves. Slept like babies!!!

Our neighbor was one of those stuck on I95 in a 4 wheel drive truck. He was one of the lucky ones who made it safely to his sons home for the night. There was 0 visibility and he said the following day when he came home there were still cars abandoned on the interstates.

In the end our 8″ turned into 14″!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy cow! They were really off on that one! The electric company recording said that our power wasn’t expected to be restored for 2 days!!! Thank heavens they did an excellent job and we had power 18 hrs later!!!

But we learned a few things from our little emergency that I’d like to share. The govt does ask each of us to have a 3 day supply of food, water, med’s, etc for those just in case events. It doesn’t have to be a snow storm. It could be a flood or an evacuation for heaven knows what….gas truck turn over, gas line break, water main break….use your imagination. It doesn’t take much.

Grocery stores only stock 1 day at a time now. They do NOT have stock rooms as in the past when The Hired Hand worked as a stock boy. They have trucks in and out daily delivering food for that day. What you see on the shelf is what they’ve got. Once the word is out that a storm is coming, the folks around here buy all the TP, bread and milk they can find! The trouble is….you don’t sit on the potty for 3 days! Or drink milk and eat toast for 3 days! Well, ok….then you might sit on the potty for 3 days!

I was pretty happy that although I didn’t remember where some things were, I had them. I have bottled water, but since I had time to gather it, I didn’t have to break into the stuff stored. We had plenty of batteries for the flashlights, but could use some new flashlights. I found that stash of wicks for the cheapo oil lamps from Wally World. Nothing fancy, but they put out enough light to read by. I love my hand crank radio. I store it under the basement stairs where we hide out in tornado alerts. It has great reception and it runs on endless arm power!

We used gallon jars filled with snow to keep the frig cold. The freezers stayed cold and everything remained solid. But if this had been a summer emergency….I’d be in trouble. I’m working on canning up a bunch of meat but ran out of health to do more. If it was necessary, we would of cooked what we had to and packed it in jars to pressure can. At least I had plenty of gas for that.

Mostly The Hired Hand was GRATEFUL for his new snowblower!!! After we dug out of the back to back blizzards of 2010….never again….he vowed!!! It took him 5 min’s to plow to the barn this time and 4 hrs last year digging by hand! He was a happy camper!!!

Here’s what we learned:

The bathtub plug leaks!

We need extra water for bathing. We have stored water for flushing and drinking, but need some 50 gallon barrels for other uses like bathing and livestock needs. Although we had an endless supply of snow…it takes a lot of snow to make a gallon of water for bathing. And that’s a bird bath!

We need more NEW Mag flashlights. Get some more D batteries too.

Get a few more oil lamps. They are safer than candles!

Re-arrange the freezer by the plan that my friend Nita at Throwback has. Keeping the lesser of evils on the top shelves, just in case there is a thaw.

Make sure the generator is working! It wasn’t!!!

Get the Lennox installed SOON!

Bake something!!! It always helps to have some kind of comfort food. I’d just pulled 3 loaves of bread out of the oven! And we ran the dishwasher that afternoon! So we had clean dishes!

That’s about it. We have plenty of food….not instant food, but real slow food and we have the gas to cook on.

This was an easy trial run and I pray that the next storm predicted for this coming mid-week will find others more prepared and that we don’t lose power again….cause that Lennox isn’t going to be installed by Wednesday! It was interesting listening to people call in on the radio and belly ache about how they didn’t have power and needed to be taken care of! For heaven’s sake, take some responsibility for yourself and have that 3 days of preps ready. It’s not the govt’s responsibility to take care of you…it’s yours!!!