January Sunshine

Well OK, I live in North Idaho, and we have had Rain (or Snow or both every day for the last 28 days). And though the sun was out for a bit of time today, I don’t think it counts, as we got Rain first, then Sun, then Snow, then rain. Do you see the pattern here??

We started with about the first 20 days of December never getting above 32 degrees. We had snow here and there, but no major accumulation. Then we warmed up, and started getting rain (and snow mixed in) so slush and mush all around.

Then last week we had another snow/rain/frozen rain storm, and about 20,000 people in our area lost there power. We did too, though we were without power for nearly 2 days. Lost the power during the night and woke to a dark house, and no way to use water (we have a spring fed well), think no toilet, no COFFEE, no shower, etc.. Dutifully called the power company and they took our information. We wait and wait…..

That evening, I come home early and bring Taco Bell to a starving wife and daughter!! Call the power company again and leave our information, and wait and wait.

Call back again and talk to a real person, she says don’t worry all the crews are out and they expect to get everyone back on, but they can’t promise anyone that they really will get their power.

We go to bed, and expect to get up to power. We are awoken at 3 am by the phone, ‘are you glad we got your power on?’ Well no, since we still don’t have power…..grrrr…. and thanks for waking us up to find that out!!! ‘ Oh you don’t, well sorry, the crews have all gone home to sleep (we are ok with this as most have no doubt been working in the cold and dark for nearly 24 hours “hey don’t fall asleep while working on MY power”), so don’t expect your power in the next few hours.’

So another morning NO COFFEE, no shower, no toilet (though it is raining so much, I can put a bucket outside under the corner of the house, it is filled up in about 20 minutes, and now just bring it in and ‘flush’ the toilet!)

Later in the morning and afternoon try to convince my wife to come to town and wait out the power company from the friendly confines of her mother’s house. She will have none of it… Finally around 3 pm, I call my wife back and conference in my mother-in-law and convince my wife that town is the place to be (when necessary always bring in the big guns “your Mom is on my side”). She is convinced, and of course within about an hour the power comes back on, so my wife ‘gets’ to stay home after all.

Now it is time to access the damage, nearly everything on the door to both freezer’s is soft and will need to be thrown out. Milk and other perishables need to go. Other items like Ice Cream and frozen juice also have gone soft (for how long who knows). Being the frugal person that she is, my wife wants to keep as much as possible. I say better safe than sorry. Is that $3 box of Veggie burgers worth 24 (or 48) hour food poisoning!! I say no way. Of course it is not just one or 2 boxes, but really which is worse: Throwing out something that potentially Might be OK or keeping it and finding out it Wasn’t OK and spending a long few hours praying to or sitting on the porcelain chariot!!!!!

I think my descriptions of the possible outcomes finally swayed her, (of course joking that they might give us all Gonneria broke the tension, and got a couple of laughs, too)! So Costco, Safeway, Yokes and Walmart all got a few extra sales this week from us. On the bright side, our fuel bill should be lower this month, 2 less days of usage!!!