November 21, 2006

4:30 am

The morning started out with  jangle.. quite literally, about 45 minutes ago. 

My boyfriend & I, the cats, and I even think the cabin itself jumped off its very foundation from the sudden clamor of the wind up alarm clock. In the dark, I latch up the bell clanger on the wind up alarm and marvel that the battery operated one, with the date, and time readout as well as a miniature flashlight on it, failed to sound the alarm. I slept with that clock, a flashlight in bed with me, so I could keep checking the time each time I woke up.

We got my guy off to work  and I discovered that the trap in the tub was dry and we were getting septic tank smell back through the house. It was positively evil. One painful of water over the drain plug seems to do the trick and lighting vanilla candles to get rid of the remaining stench. After blowing the candles out, I crawled back into bed which was still delightfully warm (I love wool 10" futons!) and I hear a commotion in the kitchen. Crawling back out of bed, I go to collect cats. I find the cats to truck them back to the bedroom so I can trap them in there with me and as I am walking through the kitchen, "Watson" drops a shrew out of his mouth and onto my feet. Though I cannot confirm it, I may have flung the cats in different directions and jumped up on the kitchen table (I am kidding about the table). 

After trying to trap the shrew and trying to let the cats get it.. who actually kept getting in each others way.,. the shrew escaped to refuge under the refrigerator. With the refrigerator being off, I could heat the miniscule beast under there 'squeaking'.  I told the cats they were on duty to catch the thing and I was going back to bed and please do not bring it into my room when they caught it. 

Now that I was awake, I am writing this by flashlight as I have been rather woken up. I will put this online whenever the power comes back on.

Shrew update: "Teenager" got up at 5am? And on his way to the bathroom I informed him about the shrew. He let me know sometime later after I heard the front door open and close, that the cats had killed it in "Kid's" room and he tossed it out the front door as an arial-burial. We decided since we were awake, we would stoke up the fire and start coffee going on it. I lit the oil lamp to see by and moved my bed to the livingroom couch. It was -8C at 5 am.

Today is Day 3 of no electricity. We called originally 3 days ago to the power company, 911, the fire department and the police departments. The reason being is we had up to 7 wires down on our road and people were driving across them.  I called the power company again last night as they had said 24 hours, then 11 hours on the recording according to our address. On a whim I called again and the recording said there had been no problem reported for our area. What!?!?!? So I call through and let the power guy know we had people driving over downed wires for 3 days. After he almost fainted.. I said "Yeah! That is why I am calling".  He said he would put an emergency marker on it, but he had no idea when we would have electric. I told him I was mainly concerned about the down lines. This morning, I called the 1-800 number again and the recording said again "We are unaware you have a problem".. so I called again.. but they really did have it down as an emergency from 24 hours previously. There were no more available trucks.. OK.. I can understand that.. but the police or fire department not closing off the road? People were lucky.

The problem was a large poplar tree which like any ole excuse for falling over.. fell and took out the wires. At 4am Monday morning, my boyfriend went to swerve around the tree in the dark and caught a bunch of the wires with his uprights on the logging truck and twang they broke. Our power was out before that, but this didn't help matters any. You cannot see the wires on the ground very well, but there is up to 7 of them there.

~~~Monday, Amy and I went to town, since she is also out of power and needed a few things, and I wanted another oil lamp and a new chimney to replace the one which had broken on my birthday. Amy also bought one as she did not have an oil lamp. I also bought an old fashioned wind up alarm (as mentioned above) and 15 gallons of drinking water as I did not want to deal with lifting the heavy cover off our well by myself and carrying 5 gallon buckets of water up our glare ice driveway. Amy is all gung-ho for living off grid now. All she needs is a solar electric fence charger, but then she does not have teenage boys who whine about not watching TV. Actually the boys have not been that bad.. but the occasional grump gets through.

Cooking is done on the woodstove, which is what is usually done all winter anyway, so it is not anything hugely different than normal. The first night we had Mushroom & Wild rice soup as it was a 'quick, what are we having for dinner meal". The second night Perogies with bacon and onion and tonight was going to be chicken stir fry.. well, actually it still is... but I will probably do the rice on the electric stove as it is not as picky to cook there.

I got to finish a few of my books which I had on the go.. "Wicked - the Wicked Witch of the West's side of the story" and "Lone Calder Star" & "The Forest House". I read by windup flashlight and oil lamp, depending on where I was laying at to read.

The only real pain besides not flushing toilets, is the refrigerator. During the day, we cart everything out in cardboard boxes to get cold and at night, before the stuff freezes, we put it back into the fridge. The weather station says it will be a high of -24C by the end of the week.

~~~

9:00 am Update.

Amy stopped by to drop off her empty water off here as I am probably making a trip to town to get more drinking water since we have no idea when the power will be back on and we have snow storms coming. We both used 5 gallons in less than 12 hours which proves you need at least 2 gallons per person per day. My boyfriend wants to put a hand pump on the old well when we have the new one in service. That would be an awesome idea after we get a new lid built for it.

Slept a bit after Amy was here and gone. Boiled up a bit of water and took a 'bath' today. I think it has been 4 days since I had one. I will think about washing my hair in heated snow water later this afternoon and wash it in dishpans.

Mary called last night and updated her on what was going up here and she told me about the flooding down there. She sounds excited about coming up in a few weeks.

~~~

12:50pm Update

Just got back from getting 20 more gallons of water. It started snowing, which is why I went to town in the first place. In 30 minutes we have 1/2" snow. Supposed to get 4-6inches today, 4-6 inches tomorrow and so forth. Currently I am listening to the windup radio and eating a Amy's roasted vegetable no cheese organic pizza (which is my favorite), which I cooked in a roasting pan on top of the woodstove. It was starting to thaw inside the indoor freezer, so I decided to eat it. I also know I can get 3 days out of the indoor freezer with no electric.

~~~

3pm-something Update

I was apparently taking a nap and something woke me up. The electric came back online and the sound of the refrigerator woke me up. I was almost disapointed. I rather liked the oil lamp in the evenings, the lack of TV. But tomorrow is a sinkful of dishes and a mountain of laundry. The power was off for just over 72 hours. The electric  company (Hydro) called us to make sure everything was working, which I think was nice of them.