Friday, January 11, 2008

Has Anyone Seen this Man?

Because as you can well imagine, WE HAVEN'T! Ever since last Thursday night when the storm rolled in, he's been working NON-STOP with only 8 hour breaks between shifts. Just enough time for a quick shower and some sleep.

This picture was taken when he stopped in one night because I couldn't get our brand spankin' new generator going. That's it - chained to the tree behind him. Classy, right? Once we heard that the storm was going to be substantial - I sent him to Home Depot to get one. Living where we do - they're wonderful to have. Once the power goes out, you never know how long you'll be in the dark. Could be 24 hours, could be a week. We were lucky - 17 hours.

A gassed up generator gets you about 6 hours of power, with enough plugs to have the coffee pot, the fridge, and the travel DVD player plugged in if necessary. I have found that 6 hours isn't very much. When your kids get up at the crack of darker-than-a-thousand-midnights, you need a good three hours of generator use in the morning. Then you turn off the generator and suck it up all day. Then at 5pm, you turn the generator back on and have a little light for the three hours before the kids go to bed. Then you're done. Well, not really. Theoretically, you can put more gas in it! But I don't do that. Big Al does, but in these situations - he's off saving the world so I'm out of luck. But again - we're lucky to have gotten the power back as quickly as we did. I have some friends who *still* don't have power!

Speaking of luck - we're lucky that a tree didn't fall on our house. Lucky that the precarious hill behind our house (we really need to put in a retaining wall) didn't collapse. That being said - I really hate being without power. See - I let my kids watch TV. There. I said it. Whatever - I'm okay with it. I mean, they don't watch TV CONSTANTLY or anything, but in the morning when things are nuts, and in the late afternoon when I need to get dinner started, and other things done - I let them watch a couple of kids shows. When the power is out, and they can't watch a show or two - they get whiny and bored and annoying. We can't read! We can't play! We can't color! We can't draw! It's too dark! I'm sick of play dough! I hate our yard! Blah! Blah Blah!
Having a house amongst the big trees is wonderful...but on a stormy day, it's really dark in the house without lights on - even in the day time.

Slowly, the residual storm mess is getting cleaned up. Broken power polls are being repaired and replaced. I hope it's all taken care of soon, because I'd really like my husband back now!

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