In the Dark

 

After last night, I need to buy new candles!

If you were wondering why I didn't publish a post this morning as I usually do, it's because I was without electricity for twenty five hours.

Sunday afternoon I was getting ready to Skype with my Swiss cousin Brigitta.  Suddenly there was a storm with strong winds.  Since then I read that there were gusts of up to 70 miles per hour.  That is nearly hurricane strength!  It was rather scary.  The rain was moving horizontally because of the wind.  Shortly after the storm began the electricity went out.  I later learned that around 50,000 people in Cuyahoga County were without power.  Obviously, I was not able to Skype with Brigitta.

The power outage in my neighborhood was confined to about thirty houses on my street.  My house was the first, or the last depending on how you look at it, to be affected.  My next door neighbor had lights, and there were lights on at the houses behind me on the next street.

After the rain stopped and the wind was less extreme, I went outside to make sure that there was no damage to the house.  There were a lot of branches down including a few that were in the street.  They were not enormous branches and I was able to pull them out of the road.

Night fell, and there was still no power.  I got out my flashlights and the few candles that I had.  I couldn't cook, so my supper consisted of a small bowl of cashews, a can of beans, and some peanut butter with chocolate syrup.  I have a gas furnace, but the ignition to start the furnace is electric, so I was without heat.  Fortunately, it was not an extremely cold night, and the temperature in my house never went below 60 F.

This morning the power was still out.  I was hungry and wanted to go out and get some real food.  The garage door opener, of course, is electric.  Yes, I know that I could have pulled the cord release on the door so that I could open it manually.  But I didn't want to mess around with that, so I walked about a mile down the road to a nearby restaurant.

Along the way, I saw what had caused the problem.  A large tree had split in half and had taken down a bunch of wires.  

  

There was a truck from the electric company there, and I hoped that the power would be restored by the time I returned from breakfast.  No such luck.  I went to the back storage shed, got a bunch of firewood and built a fire in the fireplace in case this lasted much longer and it got colder in the house.  Not long after that, three electric company trucks appeared across the street from me.  A guy went up to the wires in a cherry picker.  I guess they decided that with the fallen tree limbs that had to be cleared away down the street, it would be quicker to connect us with the power from the other end.  At last, it was restored, and here I am blogging about my day with electricity.