Day 11 With No Power...

We're on day 11 following the ice storm, and still have no power. We spent our first two nights at a co-workers house in Framingham, and the third night up in Nashua with my in-laws. I found a friend of mine who had an available generator on Monday, and Obo trekked to Lowell to fetch it and hook it up to the house to get the furnace running.

So that's the way we've been living... heat and hot water thanks to the generator, and a few lights, but that's about it. Cooking needs to take place outside on our camp stove (a real pain in a snow storm, as Obo will tell you following Friday night), and our fridge still has the odor of spoiled food (despite a thorough cleaning - we're going to take bleach and baking soda to it this week) so we're not willing to use it yet, even if the power does come on.

With the twin snow storms this past weekend, we gave up and went back to Nashua on Saturday. We waited last night for the majority of the snow to abate, but that meant that we didn't get home until 8:30 PM. and had a 40 degree house to try and heat. Man, was it cold going to bed last night!! I've slept outside in 40 and even 30 degree weather, but don't exactly relish the feeling of camping in my own bedroom.

So we missed Yule last night due to the storm, but plan on doing a small celebration at home tonight. This is the most un-holiday-ish holiday season I can remember. We haven't done any x-mas shopping (cards are out of the question), and missed holiday events we had planned on attending with the Society of Elder Faiths last weekend. Blah. I'm looking forward to traveling to see my family over New Year's. Hopefully that will help us feel more like celebrating...

In the meantime, I'm trying to figure out what I haven't learned from our experiences so far (there has to be a silver lining there somewhere). Certainly one lesson I have learned is not to take anything for granted. As Obo said to me last week, these things always happen to 'somebody else'. Well, not this time. And a line from an article that I read in Pan Gaia magazine recently has stuck with me... something to the effect of whatever can happen, can happen to you (relative to planning for lean times). I certainly feel like we're there right now.