And how long that is without power.
I’m writing today’s blog post in the aftermath of a derecho-style storm with confirmed tornado touchdowns that roared through Ontario on Saturday May 21st. I think this will be a bit more of my ramble-y thoughts rather than a to-a-point style post, but what else am I going to do 100 hours into no power but write?
The storm we experienced Saturday was incredible. Within 20 minutes our skies went from bright and happy to pitch dark and furious. The rain was sweeping sideways, the wind coming from everywhere at once and hard. My hubby saw sideways streaks of lightning across the sky and I got video of our neighbour’s tree falling down. The thunder was a constant roaring rumble through the storm. So much so that our dog, who is usually so frightened of storms or fireworks, didn’t start shaking until the thunder became separate claps again. He didn’t recognise it as something to be afraid of.
A bit foolishly, we stood on our front porch through most of it and watched, as did many of our neighbours. I’m joyful to report when the worst part was over, though still a terrible downpour, every neighbour came up and down the street to help others remove debris from their driveway, clean the storm drains, and get fallen trees to the curb for removal. An hour later we went for a walk and saw the same being done all over, and helped a few more ourselves. It was pretty uplifting. : ) And so Saturday at 2PM began our first hour without hydro.
That first day was spent wondering about food. We had just gone grocery shopping that morning and as I meal prep on Sundays, it was enough food to last the week that was sitting in our unpowered fridge.
We made the decision to open the fridge door just once to grab what we wanted out of it for that night, then set an alarm early the next day. If we still had no power then – spoiler: we didn’t – we would pack up the fridge and freezer and bring everything to my mom’s.
My mom lives half an hour away in the country and also lost power, but she has a big generator that automatically comes, on running a sub-panel, and is powered by propane. She gladly made up brekkie, stored our food in her larger fridge and freezer, and had us watch her excitable dog while she was off to meet my newborn nephew.
The rest of that Sunday was mostly playing with Sam – the excitable pupper – and trying to find any update on expected power return. The hydro company’s outage map was understandably a hot mess and everywhere just said ‘assessing damage’. Little did we know it would say that for the next two days.
So that night we lit our crappy scented candles again as we had realised the night prior that we didn’t have flashlights in the house, and played more cards and board games.
Over the days of the outage we played:
- Euchre
- Cribbage
- Rummy
- 31
- Crazy 8s
- Snap
- Boggle
- Scrabble
- and Chinese Checkers
Hubby politely declined my requests to play Monopoly – even though we have the super cool Pokémon version!
I won some, lost some, but we’ll pretend I won more than I lost. It was honestly refreshing getting to connect with hubby every night. We try to make time for each other in our usual day-to-day and usually succeed, but these night time games were fun and uplifting after the days of stressing.
I was mostly stressed about two things. If we lost our food that would be costly to recover, and I was unable to create content. This content world is fickle. It feels like people will forget about you if you aren’t consistently giving them new reminders that you exist – videos, streams, etc. Hella stressful.
Moving into Monday, both hubby and I were more productive. He tidied up the house and yard and deep cleaned our empty fridge and freezer. I sorted and filed years of paperwork and fixed my motorcycle up, getting it ready to sell. It was a holiday Monday so we didn’t bother braving the masses to see if anything was open. We ate shelf-stable food, played cards by candlelight, and went to bed.
Tuesday morning we saw our first real update. 1000s of hydro poles were down as well as a few main transformers around the province. The estimate for our location to get power was Wednesday at 11PM. Hubby had taken Tuesday off work to help get settled, but would have to work from the office the next day.
We brought Sam back to my mom’s and I had a hot shower there. Hubby had been taking cold showers at our place but I had been an embarrassingly long time without. We resupplied at WalMart. Now we were equipped with two flashlights, non-scented candles, and more shelf-stable food.
We walked to a friend’s for a BBQ dinner, played some more cards by candlelight, and went to bed. We had survived our fourth day thinking, hoping, the fifth would be our last.
Hubby got up early Wednesday morning to get to work. He hadn’t worked from the office for ~two years so he would need to settle in anew. I lazed in bed a bit until I got the text – our estimated restoration time was now a day later.
Thursday. 11PM.
Not only that, but my mom’s generator was acting up and they were going to call a technician to see what was up. They now only had the freezer plugged in.
Stress.
Hour 100 hit us with a fizzle at 6PM that night. Hubby continued his Twitter updates with a 100 hour status:
I had gone for two walks that day and eaten my weight in various carbs. I was pooched. Luckily my mom texted us that she got a temporary generator while her main one was fixed so that stress was eased. We played more card games and went to bed.
The dawn of the sixth day.
The fabled expected return date for our power.
I was pretty broken at this point. I had missed six days of work so far and have an incredibly busy summer coming up. I needed to be ahead of the game, not behind. Also missing six days of effectively connecting with my community. With a career exclusively self-created and online, it felt like six days of not existing.
Hubby went to work at the office again on Thursday and I stayed home. I took our dog for a short walk as it was stinking hot outside and he doesn’t handle heat well, then pondered my next moves as I sat on the couch back home. Just as I was moving to get up and tidy my office some more, the unbelievable happened.
The lights came on.
The TV came on.
Our Google Home did a jingle.
The fridge creaked on.
Our stove, microwave, and kettle beeped.
WE HAD POWER!
I honestly was incredibly confused for a brief moment, then dashed around the house taking photos of lights, the stove, the TV. Anything that showed power. I spammed hubby’s texts with these photos and our Discord. Then with some anxiety I checked both our PCs. We unplugged them after the initial storm and have surge protectors, but I was so worried.
They powered up just fine!
All was well again.
P.S. I also made a cheeky little ~30 second video depicting my fall to insanity during this time.
Stay safe! Always stand up for who and what you believe in.🐸✌🏻
ToadieZzz 