We keep having the same conversation, but do nothing to make it happen. It’s the “maybe we should get a generator” conversation. Of course, it only happens when we get a bit of a prolonged power outage and we can hear some of our neighbors’ generators. And now we’ve probably waited too long, because they are likely back ordered for years and cost a fortune. 

A couple nights ago, during the recent windstorms, but not on the tornado night, a neighbor’s tree fell and took out the power lines and the pole that holds the power lines. I only know this because some other neighbor took pictures and posted it on the neighborhood facebook page. It was just down the street from me, right where Bert was sitting not too long ago with four flat tires from the police spikes. So, we were looking at an outage of several hours. Fortunately, we had just eaten dinner. Unfortunately, we hadn’t yet put away the remains of that dinner. Since I knew from the power company that this would be a long outage, I didn’t want to open the fridge, so we just covered the leftovers so the cats wouldn’t eat them and waited to see if it would turn back on in time to save anything (it didn’t).

Many of you know from past blogs that we have an ejection grinder that pumps our waste out to the local sewer line. We also have well water that needs a pump to get into the house. Without power, none of these work. There is some sort of holding tank system, so we can actually get some amount of water into the house… but we can’t get it out of the house. The guy that replaced our ejection pump the first year that we lived in this house estimated that we had five magical flushes before we fill the cavity that houses the ejection pump and start flushing our waste into our own basement. With six people living in the house and two friends over, we couldn’t afford to waste the magical flushes. The mantra “if it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down” immediately went into effect. Also, mixing bowls went into the sinks so we didn’t waste any magical flushes on hand washing and teeth brushing. We’ve got this down to a science. We were lucky because nobody was in the shower when the power went off, so we knew where we stood on magical flushes. It got a bit muggy in the house with no fans or AC, but we managed. We have an amazing rechargeable flashlight that can light up the entire living room, so there’s that. 

The problem came in later in the evening. I have an irrational fear of a couple things. The first is drowning and the second is carbon monoxide poisoning. I settled the first by becoming a pretty good swimmer. I still swim once or twice a week in the lake. I resolved the second by loading our house with carbon monoxide detectors. So as we laid down to sleep, those battery back-ups started failing one at a time. Our poor dogs were completely wigged out. Reasoning that we have plenty to spare, Travis’ solution was to grab the closest detector (whether or not this is the one beeping) and toss it into the front yard. If that’s not the right one, he repeats the process. As you might imagine, I am not a fan of this solution. So I was screaming for him to hand over the detector so I could take the battery out, stopping the beeping. 

After we went to bed, every so often, another one would fail. Even I don’t know how many are in the house or where they are. So, I would pop out of bed and stand by the stairs to try to determine whether to go up, down, or stay on the main level. Each and every time, the detector knew I got up, and stopped beeping right when I got to the stairs. This happened even if it had beeped ten or twelve times. The game of the detector continued until I had four detectors disabled. Hear many beeps, hop out of bed and go to the stairs, no beeps. Finally I would go back to bed, and then, “BEEP.” Since Travis had removed himself from the situation, he just stayed in bed. I think I heard him chuckling. Interestingly, nobody else in the house even seemed to hear the beeping once they went to sleep, even if it was in the same room as them. I have decided that there may be some artificial intelligence in the detectors and they were playing a game with my head. 

I was so happy when the power was restored. Bless those line workers out there in the inclement weather restoring power. My carbon monoxide detectors now have fresh backup batteries and have been replaced to their proper destinations, as best as I could remember. Well, except Trent’s, which was jammed behind a really heavy dresser, with furniture blocking any access to the sides of the dresser. His went in the hall outside his room. There’s only so much chaos I can handle. And we only used two magic flushes. Since the power is back, we have stopped discussing that generator. Until next time… Have a great week everyone.