“I have the power!” I exclaimed yesterday afternoon. Readers of a certain age will recognize that catch phrase as coming from the Masters of the Universe cartoon, which would be said by Adam whenever he changed into He-Man. Ok, so I didn’t turn into He-Man (darn it), but my house certainly transformed (wrong cartoon, keep up) when power was restored yesterday! What preceded that was nearly 24 hours of what can only be described as First-World Hell. “But wait,” you say, “Are you trying to imply that your plight was even remotely comparable to the millions of displaced Florida residents? Residents who lost everything or have half their house underwater? Or the Houstonians who went through their own nightmares a couple weeks ago? Is THAT what you’re saying??” To that I say, “NOT AT ALL!*”
*It still sucked.
You see, it all started off fine. Irma was bearing down in the Atlantic and everyone knew she was coming. Record setting winds were stopping for nobody. Island after island felt her wrath and those of us in the Southeast just waited to see where her path would lead.
That sounded philosophical, but I meant it literally.
When her path was pretty much set, it was finally time to make some last minute preparations. I say last minute which sort of implies there were also ahead-of-time preparations. Allow me to illuminate the fact that there were no ahead-of-time preparations. It’s how we roll.
But we do it with great gusto if that counts.
I know, I know. “But you KNEW she was coming!” Yes. Yes we did. But this way is more fun. Plus memories are made. And isn’t making memories what life is really about?
[ahem]The prep started with my wife innocently bringing to me first thing in the morning that we might want to consider taking some trees down before the storm. This ‘suggestion’ (husbands know why I used quotes) was made to me while I was still in bed and only about 5% of my brain was working. Great timing. My cloudy neurons tried their best to process the suggestion, but it eventually took a shower to get the rest of my head working. In the end, I rationalized that it was worth looking into because if a tree or even branch did significant damage to the house I’d never live it down forgive myself.
I called a guy I’ve hired for years to take down trees and clean up stumps and he let me know he could come out that very day. Sure enough later in the afternoon he showed up ready to cut. We decided to take down the one closest to the house because it was dead and might pose a threat. Better for us to decide where it goes than Irma. The cost? $60. Done. Full disclosure: it’s still on the ground awaiting a day of labor to cut it up and remove it.
With the trees evaluated and taken care of, it was on to other necessities, like water. You know when the best time to go buy bottled water is? I have no idea, but I can tell you when the worst time is. Pretty much right before a hurricane is coming. Or at least after the entire state of Florida has come through your town in some scavenging exodus like out of a Walking Dead episode. Go figure. I tried on Friday and struck out three times. I gave up and decided it was time to start filling bottles at home. Later that afternoon, my wife tried a single store and walked out with two cases.
I’m doing something wrong.
It was the same story for batteries. Oh sure, if you wanted to stock up on watch batteries you were good to go. But I needed D batteries. Our big flashlights still had batteries in them that were years old and long since dead, but it’s never been a problem because we don’t really use them. 99% of the time we need a light nowadays, we use the cell phone because it’s good enough. Turns out when your entire house/street/neighborhood is without power it’s not good enough. Side note: when it’s dark with no power, it is DARK. Incidentally, for the other 1% of the time, we have mini-flashlights that run on AAA batteries. Since there were no D batteries to be found, those little mini-flashlights and cell phones would have to do.
Well, with trees, water, and batteries taken care of (minus batteries), the next most logical thing to do is buy lots of refrigerated and frozen stuff as if there’s no chance you’ll ever lose power. So I did that. #winning
Once we were pretty well stocked with water and completely spoilable food, my preparations were done.
Sunday, or the day before H-Day, we were supposed to go the in-laws for a Sunday lunch. They live south of us. Closer to Florida.
(Done the math yet?)
Yeah, so we decided to raincheck that visit and stay off the roads. It wasn’t really the drive down there I was concerned with. It was the parking lot that used to be an interstate that awaited me on the return trip. We stayed indoors instead and actually had a good family day playing games and hanging out, keeping one eye open on the news and the other on my daughter who was getting pretty sneaky with game playing. To be fair, she gets it honestly.
The sun went down and then came up again on H-Day. School had already been cancelled for Monday, so the kids were staying at home. Workers in the area, for the most part, took the day off. Except, that is, for work-at-home software engineers. Lucky me. The morning was uneventful and the winds slowing picked up in force. We watched the trees sway and throw their leaves everywhere. We read on Facebook how people were losing their power and I was inwardly thankful that ours kept humming along. The UPS backups kept beeping periodically as the power flickered but never stopped
That is, of course, until 2:45PM. That’s when the power died and the beeping never stopped. Having no power for a computer or internet can definitely put a crimp on a software engineer’s day job, so I had to take the rest of the day off. We played more games since we still had daylight. Then it started to get dark. We lit candles. There was still no power after several hours and I was beginning to realize that it might not come back on anytime soon. At some level in my brain that was unacceptable. It was a small part of my brain, but it was enough to make me cranky. According to the wife, it showed. (Sorry. My bad.)
Finally, it was dark and the storm had passed. We were all suffering a little from cabin fever since we had essentially been indoors for 2 days. Plus, we wanted to tour the damage in the area before it got too dark. There was a curfew in place to help clear the roads for people that actually needed to get to places; such as emergency workers, law enforcement, and linemen. Family minivans weren’t on the list for some reason. Either way, we knew we were on limited time. There was still a light rain but nothing major. Surprisingly the wind didn’t damage that much. There was the occasional downed tree, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. We drove around for a while and it turned out that the cabin fever was contagious in the car too. Nobody was in a good mood. We needed food, so we decided to try and get a quick meal before going home. To my surprised-but-shouldn’t-have-been self the only places open were Waffle Houses and a Krystal. The problem was that we were not the only ones out and about. I guess our little town was full of curfew rule-breakers like us. Krystal had a line that snaked into the road. The Waffle Houses (All of them. We have three. Shut up. #youaretotesjelly) were filled to capacity. We drove to neighboring towns and came up empty. By the time we’d driven halfway across the county, even the Waffle Houses were closing. Yikes. Even gas stations were emptied of their delectable hot dogs. It was not good, people! I ended up with a bag of jerky and a Snickers, which, considering the circumstances, was good enough.
It was the best Snickers ever.
We arrived back at home and went straight to bed. With no A/C. And no fan.
But also no alarm clock. You have to look for the silver linings in life.
We awoke to a powerless house just as we had left it. My wife had to head back in to work and I was to be stuck with the sole caretaker of the kids all day. The main order of business was figuring out what to do with the freezers full of food that were running out of time. The good news was that they were full and we had not opened them a single time since the power had gone out. Because I’m brilliant (you can almost see the sarcasm dripping out of my mouth), I get the incredible idea to purchase a generator. It’s something we’ve needed in the past and have always put off. What better time to purchase a generator then right in the middle of region wide power outages? I mean, why would anyone else be trying to buy a generator at this time?
Okay…it’s the absolute WORST time to do such a thing. Kinda like bottled water…
I call around to various Harbor Freight stores from here all the way to north Athens and south to Valdosta. Surprisingly, they’re all sold out. Go figure. One informs me that there will be a truck arriving at 6PM but that I’m not the first person he’s told that to and I certainly won’t be the last. In other words, get here early and good luck. I inform my wife of my difficulties and as luck would have it, she informs me that she has just finished talking with a co-worker who said they had a friend who worked at Sherwin Williams in Warner Robins and they had one.
Yes, the paint store. Whodathunk?
So once again, I’m throwing myself on the floor before my wife as she once again is able to find what I am not. This time, she finds what is quite likely the only generator in the county (and nearby counties?) still for sale. They agree to hold it for me until I can get there. I round up the kids, turn off all the lights in the house (ha ha, got you!), and head to the paint store to purchase a generator.
When I got to the store they were waiting for me. There it was. It shimmered a bit…about like you’d expect an engine in a metal cage sitting under a fluorescent light would. I’m pretty sure I heard angels singing. Or maybe it was the Bee Gees on the store radio.
Whatever. I HAD A GENERATOR.
We loaded up the magical device of power-granting prowess in the truck and headed to Zaxby’s to celebrate. As we experienced the night before, the line was long and slow. When we finally got to the ordering menu we were not greeted with the typical “Thanks for choosing Zaxby’s. Can I take your order?” Instead it went something like, “Sorry, but we’re out of pretty much everything.”
Sigh. Luckily Krystal was right down the road and did have food, so we got that.
The rest of the quest was uneventful. We got home, oiled and gassed up the generator, pulled the crank and Voila! We had power again, albeit if only a little. The freezers smiled, the food had stayed frozen, and nothing was lost. Yay! Of course we made sure to plug in all those ever-important devices such as phones and tablets. Now we could ride out this ‘disaster’ for a good bit longer.
Or not. An hour later power was restored to the entire house. Sigh.
So, just to recap, I spent the majority of the day trying to find a generator for sale (which my wife finally found), driving around for a couple hours purchasing the generator, the gas, the oil, and some lunch. Then after running the thing for only an hour we have our power restored. I don’t want to say that my day was wasted per se, but it certainly wasn’t a model of efficiency.
Ah well, despite these “hardships” we endured, it was important to remember that there were millions of others throughout the southeast that were in considerably worse situations than us. Our ‘plight’ was nothing of the sort, and was in hindsight a mere inconvenience. We truly are spoiled (and sometimes our food is too) in this world and it pays to be prepared, even if you’re only going to be without power for a day. Some actual tips (as opposed to anything else in this post).
- Always keep a stash of water around somewhere. It’s very inexpensive and you can store it in the garage or some place out of the way. Plus, you don’t have to be one-upped by your wife when she can find it and you can’t. Double win.
- Keep some frozen jugs of water in your freezer. When your power goes out, move them into your fridge to help keep it cooler longer. If you need the space, take them out and set them aside. When space opens back up, put them back in. Try to keep the freezer full. So maybe buying all that meat and frozen stuff right before it hit WAS a good thing after all…
- NEVER open the doors if you think power may be out for a while! The freezer and fridge doors that is. Feel free to open your house door. You’ll need to eventually unless you like stale air.
- Get a generator…before you need it. Harbor Freight sells some inexpensive ones that would at least keep a freezer running. And a device charger or three…
- Fill your cars with gas and maybe a portable can or two just in case gas starts running low at the stations. Trying to get gas when everyone around you is also trying to get gas is not on my list of fun things to do.
- Keep dry food/snacks on hand that you can eat that don’t require cooking or refrigeration. I suggest Doritos and Oreos, but that’s just me.
- Open a restaurant – you will make a killing…as long as your power stays on…
