Last night, about 5 minutes before bed time, the power went out in our house. Drew was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and I was in my room plugging in my cell phone.
At first I just thought, "oh great, what is Grandpa working on NOW.." (he's our landlord and lives a few houses over and has the tenancy to cause some electrical issues in my house).
I told Drew to finish up and come in the room. I started wandering around looking for the flashlight. Yes, THE flashlight. Our one and only flashlight.
I'm going from room to room, opening drawers and cupboards, and yelling to Drew "hey Bubba, where's the red flashlight?" of course he has no idea. I finally remembered we have a little flashlight in the bathroom just above the toilet. (Drew uses it to find his way from my room to the bathroom at night).
So I grab the little mini light and start searching for candles. Here's where I should mention that I'm really NOT a candle person.... but I remember seeing some of our Christmas candles (ya, Christmas, like 3 months ago... I know) out in the dining room, so I grab those and some matches & head to my room.
Now Drew and I are sitting in my bed with 4 lit candles and a mini flashlight. Drew is not at all satisfied with this. He's asking me to get more candles and he still wants that red flashlight. I remembered that we had another mini flashlight up in my closet somewhere, so I did some digging and found it. And then I had to find some batteries to put in it...
Then the drama begins. We start talking about WHAT IF... what if the power NEVER comes back on? What if everything in our fridge goes bad because the powers out too long? What will we have for breakfast? What if I was in the shower when the power went out? What if we were at a restaurant when the power went out?..... this went on for awhile.
I remembered that the laptop had been charged so we could at least use that to entertain us for awhile till we fell asleep (we ALWAYS watch tv till we fall asleep). I went online & checked with our electric company to see what was going on. They didn't show any info at all, so I called my uncle (who also lives next door), and he said it looked like the whole street was out, and No, it wasn't something Grandpa did.
So Drew and I spent the rest of our night watching Youtube videos and talking about how UNPREPARED we are for any type of emergency.
I'm normally a very prepared person. I'm paranoid about EVERYTHING especially when it comes to Drew. But I guess my paranoia doesn't apply to power outages... or natural disasters.
Not to self:
This weekend, stock up on:
Batteries
flashlights.. like 5
candles.. like 40
food... don't forget chocolate
I like that you thought that "Grandpa has a tendency to do these things." Sounds like my Dad. heehee
ReplyDeleteWe like power outages - because they are fun! It is so quiet and we just all hang out in the same room - pretty neat.
The two best were once when the power went out in the night, during a heat wave - and we all slept in the dining room, on the floor, with the back door open to catch what little breeze we could. The kids were all under 8.
The second one was after hurricane Isabelle and we were without power and water for 9 days. It was a bit of a hard time, but we had such an awesome time grilling up all the food we had to save - hunting for ice and additional batteries. It was a pirate adventure for the week plus.
We were just happy we, our neighbors and our homes were okay. It was an great [forced] vacation. :)
If you can find one - buy a hand cranked flashlight/radio. In case your lap top isn't charged and you run out of batteries - you can always just crank that and have both - for light and to know what is going on.