So, yes, the blizzard did hit and, lo, we lost power from about 6 until 9:30 am. Since we’d been out late last night—to see “Ruined,” a brutal yet redemptive play at the Huntington—it was very easy to simply curl up next to the warm body sharing my bed (Yes. Yesterday’s blog re body heat was on my mind) and go back to sleep. Eventually, however, the wonder of the hushed, whitened world outside drew me out of bed around nine.
First challenge: How to make coffee. Happily, I discovered that I could light the hi-tech gas stove with a match. Arright! I even remembered, sleepy as I was, to add extra water to the pot so that when I heated it for coffee I was also heating the kitchen. Slightly.
In those first few minutes of being awake, fortified by coffee and in my warmest robe, pajamas, socks and slippers, I thought: “Well, this isn’t so bad.” But with no cars on School Street, no refrigerator noise, no rattling radiators, no children walking by on their way to school; in utter, utter quiet, I could actually hear this old house start to gently creak. It was cooling down.
That’s when it hit me: This could really, really suck.
I’m not going to claim that in those, literally, chilling minutes before the power came back on and the radiators began cheerfully clunking again that I had an entire mind-meld/totally empathetic Ah HA understanding of what it feels like to be poor and cold and helpless.
But I was pretty close.
Yeah, my parents had a similar experience, immediately after buying a pellet stove…only our power was out for days.
We never hydro- or power company-based heat again. Glad to hear you got your power back so soon though. Time to invest in a wind machine or solar panels maybe?? 🙂
We never never had, that is. Early, sorry. 🙂