Saturday, December 13, 2008

We Are Powerless

The power went out yesterday morning just after four. I know this because I had woken up with Earl, who was on his way out the door to the barn, and was thinking through the day, wondering if I should get up or go back to sleep. I did eventually get back to sleep, but power outages come with their own work list, and first I had to find and hook up the corded telephone, light a candle in the boys' room so they wouldn't be scared if they woke up, and call the power company. The power company has a new feature where every call registers as a customer effected by the power outage, and you get to hear the running total at the end of the call. I was caller number one. Later, when I called with the account numbers for the barn and creamery, we were up to five and then ninety-two.



The corded phone was a bit of an issue. We used to have only a corded phone a few years ago but then something mysterious happened to its jack and then the kids were playing with the phone started working sporadically. I bought some cordless phones and now the Find-the-Phone Game is so deeply entrenched in our family dynamic, we wouldn't know what to do without it. I found the phone and hooked it up, but didn't get a dial tone. I remembered all the abuse the handset took from small children who like to pull on squiggly cords, so I thought maybe I'd try replacing it with one from the old fax machine. Bingo. We had a dial tone, but the new handset wouldn't fit in the cradle to hang up the phone. Hmmmm. What to do? I thought about trying to make a clip of some sort, but then, in a rare moment of embarrassing clarity, I realized I could use the broken handset to press down the button. So when the phone rang, which it did about 87 times yesterday, I ran over to it and said hello in the dead handset. Every single time. I tried to practice, even, rehearsing what I would do like downhill ski racers mentally taking themselves through the course at the top of the hill. No use. If you called yesterday, you probably heard a distant hello followed by confusion followed by my frustration at being an old dog unable to learn a new trick, then a cheery, "Hello!" to cover it all up. And if you called back five minutes later, you probably heard it again.


I used to love power outages when I was a kid. We ate interesting things cooked on the woodstove or the stove in my mom's camper van. We used candles and extra blankets and the house was so unbelievably quiet. I don't remember the power ever being out for that long, maybe a few hours. Certainly, it was on by morning. I still loved power outages when I met Earl, and we fell right in step with the Y2K drama, planning our post-electrical world. Then the power went out for four days after the remnants of a September hurricane came through and I handled my desperation for a shower so poorly that Earl, who had married me only a few months before, was no longer enthusiastic about our unpowered future. Thank goodness it was all hype. I know I could do it if I had to, and lord knows I don't get a shower every four days anymore, but those nice appliances do a lot of work that I just can't imagine having time, or inclination, to do. I don't mind washing dishes by hand, but laundry? I like to press the beepy buttons on my front loader, toss in a tablespoon of soap, and move on with my day.

I think the boys are enjoying this outage, though it's hard to say. They were home from school and played with Legos and art supplies all day, with frequent interruptions from me to pick up the floor, lest we step on pointy toys in the dark. They got a metal bowl, filled it with snow and melted it on the woodstove so we would have a way to wash our hands. They stirred it with spoons, slurped it like soup, and eventually decided to add the soap right to it, mostly because the idea of not adding something to a pot of water didn't seem right in BoyWorld.

They are nestled in extra covers right now, Saturday morning, and seem unbothered by the rumbling generator or anything else. Today I think I'll read to them from Little House on the Prairie and maybe we'll make bread and bring it to people who have electric stoves. Or maybe the power will be on, and we'll watch the Muppet movie that just arrived from Netflix and air pop some popcorn.

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