Yearning for Power

I woke several times in the middle of the night each time glancing towards the clock. Still no power. Our home was left in total darkness. No lights, no clock, no nothing. However, planning for such, I had my Blackberry bedside complete with its alarm set for 530am just in case I didn’t wake up naturally. And that’s what woke me, the BlackBerry alarm. Not sure why, but I woke excruciatingly tired. I rolled back over and slept until 5:50am. 

What made it worse was that there would be no morning coffee. Ugh!  I pretty much had to feel my way around the house, which honestly wasn’t that hard. I did my exercises in total darkness.

 The walk with Ykraps was a bit different without the benefit of any lighting. The usual early risers weren’t out either which only added to the eeriness of the powerless morning.  All in all I took the ongoing power outage in stride. I was certain that it would be back on soon. Before getting into anything else ,I leaped back onto the sofa where I slept for yet another 45 minutes. Let me tell you, that was some blissful sleep, too. 

I alerted Mindy to the conditions which she already knew. She already knew that she and  Jacob wouldn’t have school due to the widespread power outages and wind damage. Lucky them. 

I headed out the door for my run around 7:00am. The weather was much cooler than Saturday & Sunday. The day’s forecast called for temps in the low 70’s with increasing sunshine. I ran four miles on almost empty streets. I noticed a few streets where the power was mysteriously on, but by and large everyone’s power was out. 

I showered and left for work a little late. I didn’t leave the house until 8:20am. On top of that, there were long delays due to the power being out at both major intersections along Wilson Rd heading towards I-270. I didn’t get to work until 8:50am. Because of the wide spread power outages, we had several call-offs. And honestly, it was a little difficult to focus given that our power was out and that we had trees down. I really wanted to be home tending to all of that. Despite How I felt, I was needed at work.

 Before heading into work, I remembered to put my new air compressor in the Trooper so that I could do a lunchtime return. Come 1pm I drove to the mall to return it. I was worried just a little that they might try to force a repair in lieu of a return. They did not. In fact, there was another compressor, same model as mine, setting at the counter also returned. I asked about it. The fella working the counter pleaded ignorance. He said I could get another or perhaps even another model. Long story short, I decided on a different model that was $10 more today but $20 more the day we bought mine. Of course, I fully expected to have to cough up the difference. However, the guy working the register fumbled with the return process, seemed clueless honestly. He finally gave up and told me it was the same price and gave me a receipt and wished me well.

 Back to work I went hopeful that my replacement compressor would serve me well for years to come.

 I called Mindy once I was back to share my Sears story. She was at lunch with neighbor Crissy and the collective batch of five kids. They were at Barley’s. Apparently they tried Bob Evans but it was packed. Barley’s, on the other hand, was not. At least that was Mindy’s excuse. Too, Mindy informed me that neighbor Kenny ran an extension cord to our home from his ginormous generator to power up both our freezer and fridge. We were setting at roughly 18 hrs without power. Mindy mentioned that Barley’s had Centennial IPA on the tower. I asked if she’d bring me home a growler. She willingly agreed. 

I left work for home around 4:30pm so that I could hurry home and cut the large tree branches lying in our backyard. Mindy, bless her heart, had already raked the entire backyard prior to me arriving home. She even convinced the kids to help, but only after threatening bodily harm. J I wasted little time getting after the work ahead. I changed clothes then gathered everything I’d need to saw wood, including my Echo chainsaw that I bought last summer to cut down the weeping willow tree. I had to smile when I opened the storage bag. The saw looked like brand new thanks to the thorough cleaning I gave it prior to storage. Mindy used the giant loppers to cut away the lateral branches while I got busy with the chain saw. I offered to let her operate the chainsaw but she declined. It took us about an hour to finish up. Afterwards we carried all the logs and trimmings to the compost pile behind the tree swings. 

The yard looked nearly perfect last Saturday before our party, but now it looked war torn. Unfortunately, that’s happened a few times over the last couple of years, each time due to big storms.  We spent the remainder of our evening relaxing under candlelight. There wasn’t much else to do. For dinner I ate their Barley’s leftovers. To wash it all down, I poured myself an IPA after the kids were in bed. Once again, the kids, especially Bella, weren’t too keen on going to bed without any power. Ultimately, they did, and so did we.