Ah it's warm again! Thank goodness. Here's what happened...
About an hour after I finished my last post (Monday, Oct. 29) the power went out. And stayed out until this afternoon (Thursday, Nov. 1). It was dark all of the time and chilly all of the time and super duper boring. But it definitely could have been worse. Here is what helped my family out...
Number 1: THE GENERATOR. My dad had our generator ready to go as soon as it started raining. When the power officially went out he got 'er going and only used 'er to power one thing. The refrigerator. Seriously. You want to have access to a fridge during this. Hypothetically, the generator could power the whole house, but ours (and I think most generators) runs on gasoline and it would talk a whole bunch of fuel to keep the whole house going. We have an extra freezer and we condensed as much as we could into the fridge/freezer combo guy in our kitchen. Whatever didn't fit we defrosted and ate, and whatever we thought we wouldn't eat we threw out. If we had needed it, the generator would have powered our sump pumps, as well, to keep our basement from flooding. The rain was so violent though that it just kind of hit the ground and rushed away. It didn't really sink into the ground so we didn't even need our sump pumps. It obviously wasn't ideal but it put us in a much better situation than people without a generator. Also, by the third day with no power we were going so stir crazy that my dad ended up plugging in a laptop and somehow rigging up the internet (don't ask me what he did...seriously...I have no idea how any of that works) so we could watch us some hulu. Good call daddy.
Number 2: Because the generator runs on gas, we needed to have a steady supply. My town actually ran out of gas for a day (because I live in hillbilly country and everyone was was preparing to fuel up their generator...seriously...it was so noisy outside because everyone had a generator humming on their back porch) but luckily my daddy planned ahead. We had gas in all of the cars, which we weren't using because it was hurricane-ing, and we had some extra fuel tanks filled up.
Number 3: Another benefit to living out in the sticks is that my house gets it's water from a water tower. Yes, those mythical things that always get vandalized in order to defend someone's honor by the end of a country song. So as long as that sucker had water in it, we had water pressure and therefore could wash our hands and flush the toilet and take a shower and, uh, drink. Just in case we also had several gallons of bottled water as well as some 30 gallon tanks that my dad had filled with hose water. We were lucky though and the water tower held out for us.
Number 4: My family is just fortunate enough that we have a lot of gas powered things. We have a gas stove so we were able to cook, and in the even that the stove would have malfunctioned we also have a gas grill. The best thing ever though is that we have a propane water heater. Which means that we could shower and wash our hands with hot water! Some of our neighbors weren't so lucky. Any one without a gas stove or water heater suffered a lot more than we did. It's a close knit community though, so no one was left cold and hungry...everyone who was able to help offered their services.
While all of that was going on, here's what we actually did. Mostly we sat around and fought with each other. Ha. I'm only sort of kidding. My mom and I did go out shopping once the whether cleared up, just to get out of the house. My friend and I spent a few hours at the library enjoying warmth and wifi because it got power back before our houses did. That same friend and I eventually sought out refuge at the house of our other friend, who was fortunate enough not to lose power. We stayed with her Wednesday night.
At this point I think most of the town has their power back. It was a cold few days but we all made it through. My high school has been closed all week but I do have to go back tomorrow. Although I question the point of a one day week...what exactly are we going to accomplish?
Thanks for the memories, Hurricane Sandy.
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