I awoke on Wednesday, February 17th certain that we would have our power back. The most that I had heard of anyone being without power was 32 hours, and as of Wednesday morning, we were at the 36 hour mark. I found Potatoe snuggling up with Pumpkine to stay warm. Normally, the two fight to be the one that is closest to me at night. Instead, they clung to each other to be warm. It was around 45 degrees in the house, and Pumpkine was our only heat source.
It was still dark outside. I debated whether I would be colder staying in bed or getting up to sit by the fireplace, and I decided on the fireplace. I got out of bed, put on several layers of clothes and went into the living room to find Trooper sitting by the fire place meowing for me to light a fire. I happily obliged.
I sat with him for a moment as I assessed the situation. I noted that the kitchen looked like that of a beach house or vacation cabin. The countertops were full of bottled water, snacks and the leftover remnants of the “sammies” that we had made the night before. It took just two days for us to go from an immaculate kitchen to state of disarray. I decided to warm myself up by straightening the kitchen.
I used some bottled water to make my French press coffee, and then I sat for a moment. I needed a shower, and I needed to warm up. My feet had been numb from the cold for quite some time. I texted close by friends in hopes of finding someone with power. Some had one or the other, no one had both. Most with power had no water because the return of the water the day before had blown out their pipes or the return of power had thawed their pipes to reveal a leak in the form of water spewing from the walls or ceiling.
It was cold in the house to the point that it no longer brought in a chill when I opened the door to let a fur kid in or out. The chill already filled the house. I was out of ideas on what to do. I went outside to sit in my car, get warm and charge my almost dead cell battery. I am glad that I did. The phone rang. It was the first call that had gone through at the house since the power outage. I had turned LTE service off, switching to 3G, and apparently this hack worked.
It was a friend reaching out to let us know that they had power, internet, AND water. We would need to be super careful driving there on the icy roads, we had gotten more ice over night, but it was just 2 miles away. We made it safely, and never has a shower been more amazing!
I was first to get into the shower. It felt so good to be clean! I then got on my laptop, and I was in the process of figuring out how to connect to their internet because I had so much to get done for work when the power went out. Seriously….Little Chirp was in the shower at the time, but he didn’t care as the water stayed hot.
It was maybe 3 o’clock in the afternoon. Our host opened a bottle of champagne. It seemed a little crazy to be drinking at 3 PM on a Wednesday, but what else was there to do at that moment? I was so relieved to be clean. I enjoyed chatting with my friends, and we played a few games with the kids. We tried ordering food, but without power, we had no cell service making it difficult to figure out what was open and to place an order.
Then around 48 hours after we lost power, I heard the chime of the alert of the motion cameras on my phone. Our security system has battery backup, but we have a set of cameras outside that I mainly use to check on the animals when they are out playing. The cameras do not work without electricity and internet. The alert on my phone meant that our cameras were back on! For just a second, it startled me as I realized that we were all at my friend’s house and the animals were all inside, so who set off the motion cameras?
It was the kids’ dad checking on us and dropping off Valentine’s Day treats for the boys. I went back to the house, and we checked on all of the pipes in the main house, and tried to figure out the 1980’s timer on the septic system. I then headed back to my friends house with stuff to make sammies as we had failed to find a place to order from. We ate dinner with our friends, and then we headed home.
As we were packing up to go back to the house, I noticed that the cameras were offline. I wanted to cry. Did the power go out again?
We got home to find that the power was still on, but the internet was out. We must have gotten the timer on the septic system right as the toilets, which had been backed up since Tuesday morning were able to flush with no issues at all. I rejoiced in the sound of the successful toilet flush!
Little Chirp and I sat in the kitchen for awhile trying to figure out how to report an internet outage without internet, and I finally got the Xfinity app to work on my phone. The app told me that it was a known outage. It was only 7:30, but I decided to head to bed. I was exhausted, and I could not wait to get a good night of sleep feeling clean and warm. I got an amazing night of sleep!