In the Dark – Part One – Write From Karen

This was originally published on my self-hosted blog on January 15, 2007

So, we’re alive.

Did you wonder where I was today? Were you worried? I know I have been.

I’ve been in the dark, literally. We’ve been without power since Friday night. It started at 10:30. We were settling in for the night when *boom*, our transformer blew and the lights went out. At first, we weren’t too concerned. After all, we’ve lost them in the past and City Utilities was very good at restoring our power. But when I tried to call, to report our outage, I got a busy signal. I knew right away, something was wrong. I didn’t realize just how bad it was until the next morning. We were in the throes of a major winter storm. We received about an inch of ice Friday night, another two inches on Saturday and finally, another inch Sunday. Our poor trees (we have, oops, correction, HAD, four maple trees) are destroyed. Limbs have snapped and are everywhere. Many of them have fallen on electricty lines and transformers have blown all over the city. Ninety percent of the city is blacked out. Temperatures are frigid and we don’t have heat.

The nights have been the worse. We were so unprepared for this storm. We didn’t have any wood for our fireplace, didn’t have any contingency heating plan. But thank God, the hubs had filled up the two propane tanks on our trailer and the propane tank on the BBQ grill. So, we brought the grill inside the house and have been cooking, and keeping warm, with that.

When my parents found out we were keeping warm with propane, they freaked out. They warned us about carbon monoxide poisoning (which we didn’t even think about!) and thank God, had an extra kerosene heater. We’ve been using that and it’s been WONDERFUL. It’s keeping us warm at night (yes, we make sure there is plenty of ventilation).

I didn’t have very many candles on hand so we’ve been very stingy about lighting them at night. As a result, we’ve been literally sitting in the dark. The boys and I (the hubs fell asleep in a chair) watched a teeny-tiny, battery-operated TV last night by the light of one candle. If you could have seen us, you would have felt sorry for us. lol

The nights have been the worse. Since most of the city is without power, it’s pitch black here. I’ve felt claustophobic (sp). The nights have been LONG and SCARY. It’s such a relief when morning gets here.

The hubs stood in single digit weather for over an hour to buy us a generator trucked in from Nebraska today. I’m posting this from my laptop running from the generator. Our gas is running out and we’ll soon be back to candlelight. No one can tell us when we’ll have power again. But things are so bad, I’m betting it won’t be until the end of this week. I’ll post pictures as soon as I can.

In the meantime, entries will be sporadic. I’ll post whenever I get a chance. I plan on going to the library tomorrow (assuming their power is restored) to get some work done.

Thanks for being patient. Please send positive thoughts and prayers our way. When I say it looks like a war zone here, I’m not exaggerating. Springfield hasn’t seen an ice storm like this in 20 years.