A couple of weeks ago, I got up before Aubin to take my shower, as I often do, and noticed the lights started to flicker. I had noticed how the wind was thrashing outside when I first got up, so I quickly lathered and rinsed myself so I could get out of the shower ASAP. The last place I wanted to be when the power went out was in the shower in the bathroom!!!! Side note- aren't bathrooms the worst when the power goes out? Ever since I was a little kid that was always the scariest place to be... Anyways... I got out, got dressed, had my hair wrapped in a towel, and right about then Aubin woke up. Downstairs we went to get breakfast, and everything was looking okay. Then the power went out. I hadn't "put my face on" yet, or dried my hair. Crap. "Oh well, it will probably be back on soon" I thought to myself. It wasn't. At first I kind of laughed about the whole thing, because of all the places I have stayed over the last year, I really thought Monterey, CA, would be the last place I would have to worry about the power going out. Welcome!
Aubin and I enjoyed ourselves for quite a while. We decorated the house for Halloween and played games on the floor. We heard multiple ambulances rush by... which made me sad to hear. It is inevitable with this kind of situation though. No power to control traffic lights, wind and rain in a city that normally doesn't experience either much at all. Chris came home for lunch. Luckily we had plenty of bread, honey, and peanut butter because the #1 rule was no opening the refrigerator or freezer AT ALL! Chris came home a little early that day because the power was off at school too. We got ready to go out to dinner, since there was none to be had at home. At this point I was starting to get a little annoyed. I had just created a feast for dinner the night before and we had plenty of left-overs which I was looking forward to, and I was starting to worry that it was all going to go bad if the power didn't come on soon.
We drove down the street to Carl's Jr. and discovered the whole town had decided to eat there as well! We decided to stay in line because Aubin was in a good mood, and really, where else were we gonna go that didn't have a line? Eventually we grabbed our food and headed home. We had plenty of candles, since I am a candle fiend, and we lit them one by one as needed. A friend who lives in our complex texted me saying that while she was out at dinner she saw on the news that a major power line which supplies power to central and southern California had gone out, and that's why we didn't have power. Practically no one had power. Great! They also expected the power to be restored by 10pm that night. Okay, that's plenty doable. I normally enjoy power outages, and constantly hoped for them as a child, but something changes when you have your own child to take care of and feed, and you payed for all the food in the fridge... Funny how that happens.
Chris proceeded to do his homework while Aubin went around to all the candles and stared in wondering awe. He and I roughed housed a little bit, and I sat in silence quite a bit. Almost enjoying the rare silence and lack of, well, almost everything we usually hear and see at night. We called family and spoke to them on the phone, but my phone was dying so we soon ended all conversations. Chris had no way other than wall outlet to charge his phone, so he hardly was on his at all. Luckily I had a car phone charger, and a nifty emergency flashlight/radio/cell phone charger. All I had to do was connect my car phone charger to the flashlight apparatus and my phone to that, and crank away. It didn't charge it much, but enough. Nice to have those nifty things.
Eventually we put Aubin to bed, leading him up the stairs with our candle stick holders. I think Aubin thought we were just playing a cool game. He went to bed easily. Pretty hard not to when it's pitch black. Chris and I stayed up for a while to see if the power would indeed come on. It didn't. Boo. So we went to bed too. The next morning we woke up, and there was still no power. The hardest part about this situation was that no one had power, so it's not like anyone else could bring over a meal or anything. We were all on our own. I got Aubin up, and my phone was pretty much dead. I did find, however, that as long as I was cranking while I used the phone, there was no problem. That was easy enough, so I did so while updating my mom and calling the power company to see if there were any updates. Nope, none. No way to speak to a live person either. Isn't that the best? Sorry, I just can't stand when you have a situation like that and somehow the company thinks it's better if there's just a recording. But I digress. So we had breakfast (muffins which I had baked tons of luckily), and I called Chris to see if he could try picking up some ice for the fridge/freezer on his way home for lunch. He stopped by the store, but they had minimal power and were, of course, all out of ice. They said that everyone was. We figured that was probably true, so we just crossed our fingers that not opening the fridge or freezer at all had done the trick. We had peanut butter and honey for lunch again. We actually ran out of peanut butter, but luckily had more in our food storage. Yay for food storage! And Chris was able to stay home after lunch because the school still didn't have power either, which pretty much made teaching their lesson impossible. So he was released for the day.
Finally later that afternoon, the power came surging on. Yahoo!!! I was skeptical though because the power had come back on once before for about 4 minutes, only to go back off. This time the power stayed on, and after being completely sure of that, I checked on our food. It was all still good!!!! Keeping the doors shut had done the trick, and all of our precious nourishment was ready for the eatin'. Thank goodness, because the last thing I wanted to do was go to the store, since that's probably exactly where most of the city was.
Almost two days with no power. All in all it was still fun. Not as much fun as it was when I was younger, but still a little adventure and good lesson. Make sure to always have the essentials on hand!!!! And get one of those flashlight/amfm radio/cell phone chargers ;) Here are just a few pics from our night in the dark:
Our monster friends.
Homework by candlelight. And no, he's not just listening to music, they actually have all their homework assignments loaded onto an ipod. I love technology...but not as much as you, you see.... (if you don't know, watch Napoleon Dynamite again)
One of Aubin's favorite candles to observeI'm sure this will become a fond memory for us to look back on.
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