I just looked at my last post here several days ago.. it was all a misunderstatement.. shortly thereafter.. 12:35am to be exact, the power went out and the outage lasted until this morning at 7am.
It wasn't bad the first day.. just inconveniences.. That would have been Thursday.. we went out to supper that evening after I got home from the office and had a 3 hr nap. I hadn't slept since 9am the day before, and was awake all that night without my CPAP. I have to admit, the nap seemed to be just perfect, but Friday morning I woke up with a severe headache.. a lack of CPAP headache.. and a mouth that felt like it was stuffed with dry cotton.. ugh! Normally if I wake up with a headache I just get a cup of coffee. Unfortunately, our coffeemaker runs on electric power and we didn't have any. I'd been using the heating element on the gas grill.. Charlie brought us 4 gallons of spring water.. and we wore extra clothes and coats.. yeah.. even inside. I took Wendell to Paul and Amy's to stay warm while I went to the office Friday afternoon.. that's another strange story- office on Friday, that is.
It wasn't too bad that first night.. the temperatures remained above freezing. I got to feeling like we could handle this if we had to.. and played along.
Last night was a little different. I was tired of the lack of lights and heat and eating sandwiches by candlelite.. or flashlight. Charlie had brought me a fondue pot and the base with some tea lights, and we put that to use so we could have tea or coffee or whatever.. as in hot chocolate..
Last night I thought I'd have a melt down.. it was sooooooo cold and though I was dressed like a Sherpa mountain climber, I was having an indigestion problem and had to get up and out of bed.. Then, the gingerale was icy cold (naturally), I was so stiff and cold, my back ached continuously, ..and I couldn't get the dial to turn on the on position on the grill. My hands felt frozen..and hurt when I tried to bend them.. and I was feeling hypothermic. My entire body was shaking and my teeth were chattering....
I woke Wendell up to help me get the grill going..he was not really happy to crawl out of his toasty spot in bed. I got the water on and we each had 3 hot cups of no sugar added cocoa. It has never tasted so delicious.
Well, then, back to bed.. but with all the extra fluids at the midnight hour, we were both back up at 4am to use the inside outhouse.. or at least it felt that way.. and another 'lack of CPAP headache'. We sat up for a while and made more hot tea and coffee.. and by 5am, we both were so chilled, we headed for the car, turned the ignition and heated us both up nicely. In fact, we both dozed off with the car running.. and woke up to all the lights in the neighborhood coming on at the same time at 6:55am. WOW! What a glorious sight!
Before we dozed off I asked Wendell what he thought God was trying to teach us with this bit of adventurous living.. I'd been pondering all this for some time.. do we need toughened up ? or humbled? or do we need reminded of our human frailty? Or perhaps it's a dry run for some future event we will have to endure. Whatever the reason/s .. the first words across my lips were "Thank you Lord for returning the power"..
It's still cold here. 2 days/nights without heat makes the house cool down pretty low.. and it will take time for it to all heat up again. But this morning I was able to get the bathroom (no longer considered the inside outhouse) warmed enough for a long and wonderfully warm bath. I'm still wearing 2 shirts and Wendell has on 2 pr of pants with 3 shirts. It'll be a while till everything gets back to normal chaos again.
The Valentines are due to arrive in a few hours.. gotta get some clean up done.. though I did manage to wash dishes last night. I like to do that because it makes my sore joints feel warmer.. relieves the pain.
Glad to be back online..