All I Wanted for Christmas Was Electricity!

Yes, during the snow storm, we lost power. Christmas Eve morning, we lazed around in our pajamas, taking our near-future showers for granted. Then the Christmas lights on the tree when out and all the electric hums of the house disappeared.

Turned out a tree limb on our neighbors’ property couldn’t bear the weight of all that snow and fell right on top of the power line. For hours, we had a live arcing wire across the road that leads from our house to the highway. At some point the power company moved the wire, but was unable to restore power because they had 57,000 other people out of power!

We hunkered down, grateful for the tiny generator we’d purchased at a yard sale. No kidding. We were able to heat the downstairs, so we carted all the Christmas presents to the treeless downstairs. (The upstairs heating system drew too much voltage.) We could also run the refrigerators. Cook on the stove. Heat water for showers.

But only one of those was an option at a time. 🙂

So we’d heat up the house in the morning, then cool the refrigerators down, then cook in the early afternoon while there was natural light.

I asked Dad to take a picture of us on Christmas Eve. I was going for the old time, black-and-white, can’t crack a smile look to show what difficulties we were facing, having never even gotten dressed that day.

Of course, it wasn’t really that bad. We were all together, right?

Though technically, we weren’t all together. My grandparents were supposed to spend a few days with us, playing cards, eating cookies, and watching the great-grands enjoy Christmas. Well, despite my heroic 5 1/2 hours–no exaggeration–of shoveling on 12/23, we were unable to get them up the hill.

We only used our profit off the puppies to buy Christmas presents, so we had limited our family to one gift. A big gift, but still only one. A Wii. Guess what Wii’s like to have to work? Yep, electricity!

In a blessed turn of events, my dad had sanded and shellacked homemade Lincoln logs that my kids loved! They built multi-storied houses almost as tall as they were. Our little foster girl, “Angel,” was most thrilled with a simple set of markers. 🙂

One unexpected blessing? I HAD to go without blogging or emailing. For the first time in over a year, I wasn’t feeling the constant pressure to do a little more work, stay on top of the inbox, or update a website.

I found out I really miss guilt-free living. I miss reading a good book in one or two days. It truly felt like Christmas break.

Our local power company called the day after Christmas to say the power was back on. Mom had her phone on speaker and we all yelled our heartfelt thanks. All told, we were snowed in for 11 days, without power for three. We no longer took the dishwasher or washing machine for granted. Even emailing was fun again!