What a Day!

SNOW!

Just when I think things are too incredibly boring here on the rural mountain top, I have a day like the past 36 hours to remind me that excitement isn't all it's cracked up to be.

We started off at Oh-Dark-Thirty yesterday morning, driving off to Knoxville in the pouring rain and heavy traffic before sunrise. We got lost in downtown Knoxville. We turned around and got back on I-40, ignoring Mapquest's directions, and found our way to the gigantic UT Medical Center. We waited. Bill's orders were wrong (they hadn't included the flu shots, the DOT drug-screening or the TB skin test), and so everything was postponed while he contacted the powers that be and got it all straightened out. After a very long time (I knitted almost a full scarf), he came out with 6 holes in his arms.

We got back on the road to go home, still slick and raining hard but at least now it was lighter. Bill wanted to stop at Bass Pro Shop and I was hungry, so I dropped myself at the Cracker Barrel and told Bill to come have breakfast with me when he was done. I finished my breakfast. I read my book. I read some more and drank more coffee.

After two hours, I got up to use the rest room, and found Bill at the front desk, frantically talking to the hostess. He had apparently been looking for me for two hours, walking up and down the table aisles, driving back to Bass Pro Shop to have me paged, walking to McDonalds. They were getting ready to call the police and review the surveillance tapes when I came up behind him.

He kept saying "I thought I had LOST you!" (as he scarfed down my leftover biscuits and jelly). "Where WERE you?" (Right here, reading my book). I refused to take any responsibility for him not being able to recognize his own wife of 27 years. At one point the hostesses and Bill were standing right behind me, wondering where I was.

Now that our day's drama was done, (we thought--go ahead and read on), we finally got to laughing about it as we made our way home to Rogersville. As we came into town, the rain turned to sleet and then snow, and I remembered that I needed to go by the library to turn in my time sheet.

And there on Main Street, minding my own business, stopped and waiting to turn left into the library parking lot, some decrepit yahoo in a beat up pickup truck rear-ended me. I didn't even have time to take my foot off the brake and hit the gas to get out of his way. Boom. The whole tailgate of my new blue car (with only 7,000 miles on it) was smashed in, the bumper broke (but cushioned the crash beautifully, it was amazingly gentle even with him going 30 mph and me at a dead stop).

Bill got all the information from the driver, while I walked through the snow to go turn in my timesheet. Bill called the insurance company, who told him to go make a police report. So off we went to the police station to get that done.

At this point, the snow was really starting to come down hard; big, fat, wet flakes about the size of a silver dollar. By the time the police were done with us, we were wondering if we were going to make it home and up our driveway.

We did get up to the house, and Bill immediately put the red car down by the road. We snuggled in for a snowstorm. I heated up some leftover pasta and we were watching a movie and being thankful that the day from hell was over.

Not yet, however. At 6 pm, the power blurpped off. It went on. It went off. It went back on. At 6:30, it went off for good. We had flashlights and candles, but we finally gave up around 7:30 and went to bed to stay warm.

This morning, the power was still not on and the scene outside was a classic Winter Wonderland. The house was about 60 degrees, and we started working our way through our morning rituals without electricity.

First, there was the problem of water pressure. Without juice, the pressure pump wouldn't fill the toilet tank or keep a shower running long. Bill got a bucket of water from the tanks down in the basement to fill the toilet tank after flushing. I ran a bucket of warm water (the water heater is propane, so it was still hot) for "bathing." I got out the bottles of hand sanitizer for kitchen and bath.

Coffee was our next problem. We use a manual drip coffee pot, so all we had to do was light the propane stove with a match, and we could heat water. But we grind the beans fresh each time, and it's an electric grinder. A combination of a food chopper and then pounding them with a mortar and pestle made an acceptable, if weak, brew. Note to self: grind some beans ahead of time for an emergency stash and put it in the freezer!

Breakfast was accomplished by throwing a pound of frozen bacon on the griddle and peeling the strips off as they defrosted. Toast went on the griddle too. Eggs in the omelet pan.

Bill got the old propane heater in the basement going (once it was the only heat source for the house, before the heat pump was installed), but it was still pretty chilly upstairs. We ran around cleaning house (we had nothing else to do), and when Bill went outside to chainsaw the trees that came down in the driveway, I decided to clean out my pantry, something I've been procrastinating about for months.

The power came back on around 1:30 pm, and glory behold, stayed on! I quickly printed labels for my eBay buyers and used Bill's deer carcass cart to wheel them down the snowy driveway, hoping to beat the mail carrier. When I walked back up to the house, I quickly washed dishes, took a shower and ground some coffee beans, getting ready for a possible round two.

Life is returning to normal. When the furnace kicked back on, it was 50 degrees in the house; Now, it's back up to 64. Thousands of people are still without power, but we're doing fine. A mere 18 hours without electricity reminds me of all the things I need to do to be prepared for "an emergency." This wasn't hard, but it prompts thoughts of what we need to do better next time.