The weekend really blew by. Literally. As I write this, the wind is still blustering outside; the lingering remnants of a historic storm that came through on Saturday.
Storms are hardly unfamiliar or unknown here. We get them regularly in the late fall and winter. They are very much like the hurricanes I went through in Florida. Lots of wind. Lots of rain. Ours don’t rotate, but that’s about the only difference between a Cat 2 or 3 hurricane in the Sunshine State and one of our winter storms.
The power goes out sometimes in Seattle. It goes out in Florida, too, but you don’t need a big storm there for the lights to go off. It can be a beautiful day outside. Then, without warning, Florida Flash & Flicker, as the power companies are known, blows something somewhere and the whole system goes down.
At least here, the power usually goes out because a huge fir tree fell across a street and downed the lines or crushed a substation. In Florida, it’s flash, flicker, what the hell? And days can go by before the power goes back on.
In Shoreline I had to wait four hours this time. I know, a very short waiting period; especially compared to some of the people around here who are still waiting for power today, Monday.
You’d think I would be used to not having power, having lived in Florida where the power was once out for eight days. But I couldn’t even handle four hours well. Yes, there were games to play, but they remained in the closet upstairs, not even being staged on the stairwell for potential play later in the evening when day turned into night.
The candles remained in the drawer as well. There wasn’t even a thought of bringing them out, or finding the flashlight that is in some drawer or cabinet, somewhere in the house.
The power went out at 1:30. I was in the midst of cooking lunch at the time. Thankfully we have a gas range so the lack of electricity didn’t put a damper on making my tummy happy. No biggy, I thought. Been there, done that.
I finished the tuna and cheddar sandwiches and made a large sign for the refrigerator to remind everyone (mostly me) to keep the fridge closed. We had just gone grocery shopping so there was a lot of potential loss to face if we opened it even a crack. When the power goes out and you are a foodstuff, minutes count.
After downing the sandwich, I almost immediately became bored. I finally grabbed my guitar, thinking this was the perfect time to learn a new song. I didn’t learn one though, largely because all my music is on my iPad and it was barely charged.
Dang, that damned technology is wrecking my fun again. I continued playing for a bit, cycling through some chords and then some individual runs of notes. That excitement lasted about 25 minutes. Then I was bored again, or should I say, still.
I thought for a moment about writing, but my laptop was upstairs and it too was down on charge. Why keep everything charged when you can just plug it in when it’s near death, I used to think. Now I know. So you’re always prepared for a power outage.
Biding your time when the power is out was somewhat easier in Florida. Without power, you die. Your entire life is consumed by the thought of dying. There’s no air-conditioning when the power goes out and it gets humid in a hurry. To fight the desire to simply roll over and be dead, you go into survival mode, even going so far as to drench your sheets in a bathtub of water, wringing it out, and then laying under it to sleep. It’s white trash AC, but hey, it’s better than being dead.
We don’t really worry about such silly things in Washington State. We don’t have AC in the first place, so we just make do with the heat. But making due without power? That’s darned hard in this connected world.
We have 16 devices connected to the Internet these days. Four iPhones, three iPads, a Kindle, two game systems, our Amazon Echo and five computers. Yes, we are one connected family.
As such, I guess we don’t really know what to do when the power goes out and there’s not only no power, but no Internet. Sure, I used my phone to check on the status of the power outage, but it was near its data limit so I couldn’t even tether my iPad to it to have a better viewing experience.
So there I sat. Bored. I finally got so bored that I went to take a nap. When I awoke, I heard the telling sound of the clock in the hall. What it was telling me was that the power still wasn’t on, because it’s battery operated. I never hear it when the power is on. If you want to know why, see the note about the 16 devices.
At 5 p.m., the power unexpectedly popped on, two minutes into the Seahawks game and right before kickoff. The power gods at City Light had sent us a miracle. Just in time for the game and dinner.
As I began to eat, I thought back to those fun days as a kid when a power outage was exciting. We’d all gather in the kitchen and eat Underwood Deviled Ham sandwiches. We’d dig into the bag of Wonder Bread and slather on some deviled ham as one of my brothers chose which game we would play together. The power could be out for days, but as long as the bread and deviled ham held out, we were good. It was an adventure, and a grand one.
Now it’s just an inconvenience. That’s sad, I think. I long for the way it used to be. Unless those deviled ham sandwiches were just like the one my mom sent off with my dad to his work on day. She used the dog’s food.
In the Emerald City, wondering which way the winds will blow today,
– Robb