It Just Keeps Getting Better and Better!

When I posted last we had just got our power back. Well, that was all just a tease. It went out after having it about half a day. It was right after I stopped doing things I needed to do with electricity when it went off again Thursday Morning. We finally just got it back Saturday evening at 8 PM. Thank God too because I was a bit worried our Kerosene heater wasn't going to make up for the 9 degree temp outside. It has been an extremely hard week roughin' it here with 4 kids who have no idea what in the world is going on. Dominic after about the third day got the point that he couldn't play on the computer or Xbox and finally by the 5th day no power he just stopped asking, period. Mia has screamed and screamed so much just to be held all dang day. She slept with us two days and then one of those nights we had both Mia and Damien in bed with us. They would wake up every night screaming hysterically like they were dying. I had a candle on a hallway shelf and I think just the unfamiliar-ness of everything was getting too hard on them. Dominic and Alex slept on the couch and love seat all week since Dom's room gets so cold and Alex's in the basement was about 50 degrees!

Most of our neighbors had either whole house generators or little generators like us and stuck around. Some didn't and just abandoned ship so to speak. We used our generator mainly for the fridge and freezer, a kerosene heater for heat, tons of jugs of water to flush the toilet and give baths since the pump had no power to get water to us. Dave ran to his aunts twice for showers but I just warmed water on the stove top I bought to take baths. We had no phone since we had Cox so we had to run our phones out to our car and hook the chargers on a converter we have to charge them up.

By Friday I had finally hooked up a 13 inch TV to our generator and started watching the 5 air channels we could get with the bunny ears. They were reporting some serious snow fall for Friday which ended up knocking out our plans of eating out with Dave's boss and coworkers because it was falling an inch a hour. So along with all the ice we then got snow too. Sigh. Saturday we woke up to 8 inches and being totally snowed into our house. I told Dave to get up because if we didn't clear the drive we'd never get out if it kept snowing so both of us cleared the drive to the road so we could get out. Two hours later I opened the door to see one of my neighbors with his huge tractor in my driveway grading it clean the rest of the way. I wanted to bawl. Everyone out here has been trying to cope yet still has time to help each other out. Dave and our neighbor Levi who's trees fell on our horse pen will be trying to get that mess cleaned up when the weather gets better. Living in the country we don't normally see our neighbors as much as someone who has someone right next to them in town but when situations like this happen our neighborhood seems to stick together. The guy behind us who lost tons of his Cottonwood had about 3-4 other neighbors over there cleaning up with him.

Dale's Cottonwood- or I should say what's left of it.

We heard a lot of comments about our choice (or I should say MY choice lol) to stay here instead of going to a Red Cross Shelter or staying with family. Everyone offered to take us in but I felt we would be fine at home. I really don't feel selfish for my feelings of doing this but I think plenty of people thought I was. We had water, food and heat. Like a friend said, "if they'd just come over they'd see we're not in that bad of shape." So true. I wasn't going to leave our fridge and freezer to go bad either so we needed to keep the generator on in spurts to keep that from going yucky. There's probably a good $500 + in food in both. I had the little electric stove top or toaster oven plugged in to the generator to make food. They weren't great meals but it was food! Dave had a hard time and just wanted to escape from it all. He didn't want to stay at the house at all. I seriously called him a pussy because of the way he was acting. LOL! Electricity is a blessing but everyday hearing people in the Walmart, etc complaining to a friend about being out was really starting to get on my nerves. People in town at least had water and didn't have to go somewhere twice a day for it. They could take hot showers, and they were first priority when it came to putting power back on. It really makes you wake up and think what would happen to people if there really is an energy crisis or something.

So the kicker was that this happened at such the WRONG time. Before Christmas I mean. We probably spent $200 on things we really didn't need to buy this week. Kerosene was $42. Gas was $14. Eating out three times $60. Misc. survival supplies at Walmart $100. I can't imagine the people who spent $500 + right before Christmas for a generator. My friend spent $900 on one big enough to power their pump to pump water again. Even though the wrong time, all of us can agree here in town that this whole ordeal brought friends, family and neighbors so much closer. Our kids were all lovey and hanging on us constantly. We had a hard time keeping them off of us and although cute, it was sometimes annoying. lol

Another kicker, I started itching my head and I think I just got the beginnings of Alex's head lice during all this so I did the 2nd treatment of RID Saturday on everyone and did Vinegar/Mouthwash on my head last night. Today I am coloring my hair Auburn. lol They should all be dead after today I would think. It's hard to believe that it's already Monday again, the day we lost power and Dave is back to work. What a crappy vacation but I was so glad he was here at home during it all.