Let there be light

Meteorologists had been saying all week that Friday night would be ripe for strong winds and tornadic activity. Frank and I rarely go anywhere at night anyhow and were watching the XFL game on tv. It was about 9:00 pm and the game was in it's final couple of minutes when the lights flickered in our house. It wasn't raining outside and there were no tornado warnings in the St Louis area or anything. Then it happened again a couple of minutes later. Strange. Then about 5 minutes later,,,, WHOMP... the house was immersed in total darkness. No tv. No internet. No lights. Geez. I looked outside and the entire neighborhood was pitch black. No street lights, no porch lights, no lights on in any houses for as far as I could see. There was a three quarter moon so there was an eery glow on the streets and sidewalks. The electric company website stated there was a power outage in the area affecting about 1800 customers due to a tree that fell. There were multiple subdivisions affected so I couldn't imagine where the tree was and why the area affected was so vast. We figured the outage would last maybe an hour. They rarely last longer than that.

Three hours later and I'm wondering what's taking so long. I was concerned about the food in my upright freezer. We just went through having to throw out a freezer full of food last summer when our 25-yr old freezer died and we had to buy a new one. If I had to go through throwing out all that food again and the expense of replacing it all again at much higher prices this time .... I was sick thinking about it. We kept checking the power company's website all night but they never updated it with an ETA. We lit some candles for light and our iPhones became our lifeline since they were about the only thing we had that worked. My landline didn't work because it needs power in order to have a dialtone. We tried to use our cell phones sparingly and when they needed to be charged, we went to the garage and charged them in our cars. We couldn't move around the house without flashlights. We pretty much sat in silence surfing the net on our cell phones and briefly watching some DirecTV Stream on our phones. We were trying to conserve the battery. Finally around 3:30 am we decided to give it up and go to bed hoping power would be restored by the time we woke up. We got up around 7 am. The house was cold. Why? Cause there was still no power. The furnace couldn't kick on without power to the fan. Ok, now I'm really getting nervous. The power company had sent me a status message that a crew had been assigned (after a 10-hour outage? So... there wasn't a crew assigned last night??) and said that power would be restored by 8:30 am.

We couldn't make coffee... which is a big thing in our house. We drink coffee all day and evening long. I couldn't even hop in the car and drive to Starbucks for coffee because the garage door opener wouldn't work to let me out (Yes, I know it can be opened manually but I'm getting too old for that). I had some leftover coffee from yesterday evening and since I have a gas stove I lit a burner and poured the coffee in a little pan to warm it up. Hey... when you're desperate, you do what you gotta do! As soon as I got the pan on the stove... the lights all came on and power was restored about 7:45 am.

Utilities... electricity, gas, water, sewer... all so easy to take for granted until you don't have them. We were only inconvenienced and without power for 10 1/2 hours but it was rough. I can't imagine doing without them for days or weeks on end.

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