18th Century

Being a Night Owl was tough during the long-term power outage this past week. Luckily I'm the prepared sort, having been a Girl Scout Of America for 10 years growing up. Also, I'd never realized how handy it would work out for improvised lighting because I procrastinate packing away some holiday decorating trinkets.

A glass snowman with a glowing sparkle-light n lantern which ran on 3-AA batts was my Livingroom navigation light.
In the Bathroom a lithium cell powered, plastic, fake, flickering Ghost candle-cup helped me out. To counter-act the ghost, while needing more light, there was an Angel, stained glass votive stand with some tea-lights in it. A few years ago at a clearance sale at the pharmacy, I'd bought a bag of 50 unscented tea-lights for about one dollar! I finally made a decent dent in that bag.

On the kitchen table I went through about 5 of them. They last longer when blown out to re-harden after lighting a new one from it, to save on matches. When needing more light I supplimented with a regular candle for short periods, careful not to use it up. I found a 30 year-old, small Santa candle still in the junk drawer too! How do you increase candlepower without additional candles? Easy, put it infront of portable mirrors to multiply illumination power.

A co-worker recently gave me a car-battery booster because the tire-inflator was broken. I made sure it charged up the day before the storm, n used the AC outlet on it to re-charge my cell phone several times, because the house phone was out, n my cell runs out of juice fast when in constant use. It could've also been used for the lamp, or TV, but I didn't know how long it would need to last for the phone safety factor. The elec Co's estimate for returning juice was Saturday, so I felt fortunate I didn't have to wait that long after-all.

Days before the predicted storm I'd put the freezer-pak collection in the freezer. All week I'd worked at eating the good stuff out of there, so the ice-cream wouldn't become a casualty n be wasted. Then about 6 hours after power was out, I put a frozen pak next to the milk in the fridge, n repeated at intervals. I also had back-up boxed milk on the shelf, n canned condensed milk, which don't need refrigeration.

I used the gas stove downstairs to heat water, n hard boiled the eggs so they wouldn't go bad. While I was down stairs I ended up bailing water from the defrosted freezer, n big hunks of frost broke off it, which I then put in zip bags n used as freezer paks in my frig. Doing this helped save my tangerines, lettuce, n unopenned cheeze too.

I stretched the use of the hot kettle water by mixing it with some cold in a basin to wash, n made tea in thermos travel mags several at a time to last all day.

Sunday, day of the storm I didn't have to work, but on Monday the power was back on there, so I did. Power was still out at home. Washing up in the dark after the sweaty job was tough, using a bucket of warm water made with kettle water n wash-clothes. It was really tough getting my hair done too.

If I had to do things this way all the time, little out of the necessary would ever get done. I felt like I was living in the 18th century- but they didn't have glowing, battery powered snowmen then...