In the dark, literally

If you don’t hear from me for awhile it’s because we have no power and no phone service. There was a huge wind storm (remants of Hurricane Ike) in the Louisville area on Sunday with 75 mph winds. (Actually it was IN, KY and Ohio) Power lines are down and on Sunday there were 275,000 people in the Louisville area without power. I was in line at Walmart when the power went off. They are saying it could be up to two weeks before everyone has power again. Schools have been closed as over half of them do not have power. Traffic lights are out and it's been crazy on the streets with people not stopping, horns blowing, etc.

Sunday was okay because it was the first day without power and it was the weekend. It was daylight out and I managed to get a lot of paperwork done and filed away things that have been piling up. That day seemed productive. Yesterday I worked late. When I got home from work it was already dark in the house. There was nothing to do but go to bed. We did play cards with a flashlight on the kitchen table. As one coworker pointed out, this is a good time to bond with your family as there are no distractions like the internet, t.v., xbox, etc.

This is a rather humbling experience. It makes me realize how much we depend on power. Simple things like having ice in your soft drink or the electric garage door opener we take for granted. You can't find a bag of ice anywhere in town and generators are sold out. Right now we have a borrowed generator that will run for about 3 hours before running out of gas. It’s not practical to run it at night as someone could steal it. (I’ve heard reports of this happening). Plus at $4.15 a gallon it’s pretty expensive. As luck would have it, our freezer was packed with food. I have moved a lot of the frozen dinners to work, as we do have power here. And we threw out quite a bit of stuff we just can’t keep cold like ice cream, popsicles, etc. It takes some creativity to figure out how to feed the family with only a gas grill and trying not to open the refrigerator or freezer. Luckily we have a side burner so I can cook something outside. I do have access to an oven at work. So I think I will bake some things here at work and take them home, like frozen lasagna. Trying to get creative so we don’t have to eat fast food every night!

We are fortunate that our water heater is gas, so we do have hot water. I am counting my blessings about that. Taking a hot shower is our only luxury at this time. Our clothes are wrinkled and my hair is wet when I come to work, but at least we can take a hot shower!

We are trying to save the koi in our pond. Without the filter flowing, they will be deprived of oxygen and they will die. (Another benefit of having the generator.) We stopped feeding them to cut down on the ammonia that will form in the pond from waste. And we put fresh water in the pond to give them more oxygen. Right now we just have the pond filter running and the refrigerator, just a few hours at a time.

For those of you that have power, count your blessings!! Hopefully we’ll be back up and running soon. In the meantime, I need to find a place to do laundry!