I must have missed the memo that day. It was an important one; the one that informed me that there would be no power at my house for three days. Perhaps it went to my husband’s phone and not my own, but somehow said memo got missed and we were both pretty much in the dark — ha ha — on the day that everything got turned off.
All kinds of chaos ensues in a household where you are suddenly, effectively, camping inside your own house without any camping equipment. Where did I hide the candles and the matches? Do we have extra batteries for the flashlights? Where are the flashlights in fact? Oh, fiddle sticks … I just put the water kettle on. That’s not going to work, is it. Which lights were turned on at the time the electric crashed at the house? Should we unplug everything to stop the power surge when everything comes back on? Oh no, the washer is in the middle of a cycle; should I disconnect entirely, so that it can reset itself?
Heck, there is so much that we adults do not know about adulting when our little rhythms are obliterated. All those things can come to mind pretty quickly in an extended power cut situation. (I really wish we had purchased the generator we talked about last year!)
I adulted my way to the PG&E website and posted my address to see how quickly the power would be back at my place and life could resume as normal. Nervously checking the calendar, I realized that we would be without power for three days — three whole days? I definitely checked this factoid more than once. The food in our fridge and freezer would be ruined, our garage door opener would not work, I have laundry in the washer AND dryer. All these first-world problems circulated inside my tiny brain until I had to lie down like a princess and fan my fevered brow.
Thank goodness for the 5G network on my phone, so I could check in with the world outside and find out just how many people still had power. Lucky, I thought to myself several times over as I perused the outage map. Jealousy, the green-eyed monster raised its ugly head, and I found myself playing competing mind games in the power market. “Wow, we have underground power lines, they don’t! Why do they have power, and we don’t? How the heck is that possible — it’s not even that windy today!” But you can’t win, can you, and gradually you, thankfully, stop complaining and just accept the circumstances. This had not been part of my master plan for the weekend, but I could clean out the garage and do other tedious things that did not require power? How many times have I thought about accomplishing those tiresome tasks and immediately found something much more fun to do.
“I love this mega flashlight!” I said to husband, as the light outside dimmed and the world inside my house turned even blacker. “I can put it on my chest and read a book so easily at night.” Instead of binge watching some show or other, I was whipping through this really good book in the snuggy comfort of my own bed. Someone said how they totally understood PG&E needing to cut off power after the recent fires in our state, too frequently caused by downed power lines, sparks, foliage. The utility company couldn’t ever completely avoid the fire issue, but they could prevent themselves being at fault all the dang time. Same with the insurance companies — I am sure they are welcoming these blackouts. Fresh on the heels of raising everyone’s rates even higher — if they would even cover you at all — insurance is becoming an impossible deal however you look at it.
“I’d rather put up with a blackout than have my house burn down!” my friend said. Yes, that’s the spirit. It’s the “we are all in it to win it” attitude. We must do our part to help others and our state.
Almost three days after the start of the blackout, the power came back on. I heard the familiar hum of the fridge and did an attractive little happy dance in the kitchen. I realized there was likely little time to spare in the power-on mode, and started flying around the house plugging things in, finishing up loads of laundry, doing smell tests in the fridge and racing myself in a journey toward completion of all things that needed to be electrically charged before the next round of camping out in my own house.
Just as in winter we can be on the storm watch, here, in late June, we are nestling precariously on the cliff of blackout watch. It’s going to be an interesting summer, of that I feel certain. Rather than have the overpowering buzzing noise of an oversized generator, such as my neighbor has been using next to my bedroom window these past three nights, I have decided that battery storage has to be the way to go in the future. Since we have solar power for the house, we need to be super-smarty pants and use it to our benefit. We make lots of electricity — better store it well for rainy, or rather blackout, days. We’ll be on that right before the next outage — ahem.
In the meantime, I have been reminded of all that we take for granted in modern life. All the luxuries we enjoy inside our houses that we pay no mind to until they are not there. During these last few blacked out days, my husband and I went on date night to dinner and a movie. We agreed going forward that we needed backup battery power in order to power through a California summer, pun intended. And I was reminded of how much I love to read, since I just sped-read my way through a near 600-page tome in three nights. I must read more, scroll less and binge watch much less.
Sometimes, in life, it’s good to be reminded of the good stuff, the things you value and not just what you rely on to power your house and your habits. Let me know if you’d like the title to the really good book I just finished, or the number for the battery power dude who we will be calling really soon.
