What do you do if you lose power? Well if you are me, and you are at work, you continue the meeting that you are in for another 30 minutes, return to your desk, chat with your co-worker and prepare for the next morning’s briefings until the boss says that you can go home . . . 30 minutes early.
Being the dedicated employee that you would be, you straighten up your office, close up all the windows and walk through the halls to tell everyone to go home, finally making it out the door at your regular closing time.
Next, you join the rest of the county on the local freeways headed toward their warm and non-illuminated homes and wonder at the marvel that none of your favorite local FM stations are on the air. Well duh . . . there’s a power outage for the ENTIRE county plus parts of Mexico.
Finally you head home, scrounge around foryour flashlights (which by the way, your youngest child has ruined), dig through the pile of batteries to find that you are one short of every type that you need for the battery operated lantern you dug out of the garage and the battery operated radio and finally relent to using the decorative candles as light once night falls.
Ok, so maybe Im not the most prepared person on my block. I guess I’ve never really taken “emergency preparedness” seriously, but we weren’t in trouble. We had plenty of water, so we weren’t going to dehydrate. We had plenty of peanut butter and bread, so we weren’t going to starve. The hubby went out to the car to get regular updates (and doses of AC) and we had our smart phones to keep us in touch with friends and co-workers through texts, Facebook, and Twitter. The girls enjoyed hanging out in the back yard, and without city lights to muddle the sky, they were able to see more stars than usual. Additionally, they broke out some much forgotten board games and had some fun, bonding time. My oldest even said we should have power outages more often!
Around 10:30, the youngest had fallen asleep on top of her sleeping bag on the living room floor, the oldest fell asleep on the couch, and Hubby retired to the bedroom. Not wanting to sleep in a hot room with no moving air, I threw a sheet on the living room floor and settled in. It was just about that time that the kitchen light and floor fan kicked back on. THANK HEAVENS!!! I am just too old to sleep on anything other than a mattress these days.
So, no major issues for us, our food was safe, and the family had some time to just ‘be’ together with no big distractions, all-in-all, it wasn’t a bad night. However, I think I’m going to run out and get some batteries tonight.
Sweet Red's Rantings 