When it rains it pours- losing electricity, lots of batteries, and a lamp

Linking up with Holly and Sarah for Hello Monday:

Though we dealt with almost a month of drought, after this weekend of rain practically nonstop on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it is safe to say that the drought is over... The rain came from the remnants of Hurricane Helene. The hurricane also brought strong winds on Friday which knocked out power for many in our area, including us. Let’s look more in depth though fair warning that my account of the weekend is quite unremarkable and not very exciting!

Friday started off well… I picked up a sub job late Thursday for Friday. My school day was really good. I had just a small group of students all day, all of whom were well behaved. During the teacher’s planning period for whom I was subbing, I didn't need to cover for anyone so it was free time for me (since subs don’t need to plan!). The teacher’s plan period was the last one of the day so I got to leave early- always a nice bonus to avoid the traffic of after school and to have more time at home. 

Once home, I changed into work out clothes and hopped on the treadmill. I walked a fast mile- 13 1/2 minutes and then slowed down for a second mile. At some point in that mile, the treadmill abruptly stopped (glad I was not running!) and the basement lights went out. We’d lost power. The day was a rainy and very windy one so I was not too shocked that we lost power. Normally, if we lose power, we get a text from our energy provider telling us about the outage (obviously if you’re at home you know this, but I guess it’s nice if you’re not at home- you know in advance that your power is out) and giving us an approximation of when power will come back on.

No such text came through, but I was still optimistic that the outage would only last an hour or two at most. The outage lasted much longer but Friday afternoon I was blissfully ignorant of the continued a-electricity near future.

Donnie arrived home from work having not seen my text that we were without power. We had to go out for dinner since preparing one at home wasn’t possible. I also needed to charge my phone, so I wanted to drive. We ended up in Centerville and were glad to see neighborhoods there with power as well as restaurants. We hoped that when we came home, we’d have power! No such luck but at least dinner was good...

Outside darkness portended inside darkness as well (I forget to set out flashlights before we left for dinner). We used our phones for light until we found the flashlights. It was too dark to do much of anything even with flashlights. So we returned to our ancestors’ circadian rhythm roots of going to bed early due to not having significant light. Unfortunately, sleep- for me oftentimes being a precarious state to fall into and maintain- proved challenging despite having woken up at 4:00 am on Friday. I woke up around 2:00 am (per my phone’s 14% battery remaining display) and glanced gingerly at Donnie’s digital alarm clock. I hoped I would see blinking numbers indicating that power had returned but no such luck. Knowing we were still without power caused enough stress for me to lie awake for at least two hours (I saw 4:00 am on my iPhone) but thankfully I did fall back asleep for three more hours. I was grateful for that!

It was not raining hard shortly after we woke, and we decided to go for a walk. It was raining but very lightly... I am glad that we walked- the rain only increased in intensity as the day continued and we wouldn’t have been able to walk later unless we cared not about getting drenched. We were curious as to what kind of damage we’d see in our neighborhood and another neighborhood that we walk in. We saw just one tree completely down, but we saw many branches and debris on the ground. 

When we arrived home, I looked online at the Nextdoor app to see what the people were saying about the outage. Someone mentioned in a post that she’d talked to someone at AES (her electric provide- not ours) and the person said that she should not expect power until WEDNESDAY! Apparently, many lineman were sent to Florida to help deal with anticipated down lines due to the hurricane. There were only skeleton crews up in our area. Meanwhile, we’d heard nothing from our provider, Duke. In light of possibly being without power for days, we decided to try to salvage some of the food in our freezers. One of our good friends had not lost power and the couple had an entire freezer that was freed up and available for us to use. So, we loaded up a bunch of food from our deep freezer (the food had just barely begun to thaw) and drove it our friends’ house. 

Back at home, we noticed numerous instances of beeping from our carbon monoxide detectors and fire detectors. Battery is the back up power and without electricity, the batteries were being used. And then some of the batteries died and that resulted in annoying beeping sound. We replaced many 9-volt batteries.

We had a furniture delivery scheduled for Saturday afternoon and that happened, thankfully. After the furniture was assembled, we got a new lamp out of its box that we intended to use on the new piece of furniture. It was a tabletop lamp with a pretty glass base. When we were holding it to sort the cord out, the base broke in Donnie's hand. It shattered and Donnie's hand could have been injured but it wasn't thankfully. Glass went everywhere on the floor and unfortunately, we couldn't use the vacuum to pick up small pieces since we had no electricity. Ugh.

A short time after that, we heard a cacophony of noise. It sounded sort of like the beeping from low batteries in the detectors, but it was more annoying (which is hard to imagine but true) than that. "What on earth is going on?" I yelled above the noise. In a split second, I had my answer. It was the sweet beep of items that needed electricity coming back on because our electricity had come back on!! 

They say you don't know what you've got until it's gone- well, we knew having recently not had electricity! I walked around the house marveling at being able to touch a light switch and seeing light! Our internet was still out and would remain so until Sunday afternoon, but we didn't care too much about that. 

Sunday morning, we went to church and then out for a fancy lunch at the Sam's Club food court and a few essentials like a new pack of 9-Volt batteries. Our internet was restored in the afternoon- just in time to watch most of the Bengal's game. After the game, we went to our friends' house to get our frozen items. We chatted with them for a while and then came home. No walk on Sunday because the rain did not relent! Oh well, like I said, September's aforementioned drought ended that's for sure.

Here are some pictures from the weekend. I feel like this one sums it up pretty well:

Gray skies, rain, no lights!

Reading a book-book when we had no electricity on Saturday- My kindle had nothing on it that I had not read and I had no wi-fi with which to download anything so I needed to read a physical book. I don’t own a lot of physical books, especially ones that I have not read. I was grateful that I purchased a number of Charles Dickens’ books. I bought them mainly because I like Charles Dickens (the several of his that I had read) and the size of the books fit nicely on a bookshelf. I picked one out that I had not read, Hard Times, and began reading that. Bonus that I was living in my own micro- hard times and was living without electricity as all the characters were in the book! 

So glad that I bought these books! I actually didn’t end up reading for too long even though we didn’t have much on the agenda. Between complaining commiserating with neighbors  and friends via text about the lack of electricity and sharing bits of what we’d heard about the goings on of the storm, dealing with devices beep due to lack of power, trying to find out info on my phone using data and running a couple of errands, the day passed quickly. 

The piece of furniture that we had delivered was a behind the sofa table. Fun fact is that we have never had a table behind a sofa before. We have lived life on the edge, furniture wise, right? The one we bought has stools underneath it that we can use as additional seating if need be. I am looking forward to decorating it. Another surface to clutter, er buy things for, er decorate.

Pizza for dinner for Saturday night instead of Friday- truly a wild and wacky weekend! Donatos hot honey pizza for the win.

... and a free cookie that Donnie insisted I eat (we got it for free from having earned enough points from Donatos’ loyalty program)

Finally a win for the Bengals!

By the end of the weekend, thousands of people in our area were still without power. I am grateful for the hard work of those who worked to get it back on and are still working on restoring power for others.