Sunday, February 10, 2013

I Need a Shotgun and a Fishing Pole



The furry little rodent didn’t see his shadow, gets everyone’s hopes up and then what happens? He calls his little fish friend, Nemo. Talk about a bad joke. I don’t care about getting lots of snow, that doesn’t bother me at all. It was the power outage that got my panties in a bunch.

Let’s start at the beginning. I did my big shopping on Friday, Sunday and Monday and when I do, I buy four (yes four) gallons of milk and since Stop and Shop had a coupon for bread I grabbed that too. Now the milk will only last us two, maybe three days tops, so Ted stopped a BJs and bought two more gallons on Wednesday. We were set with bread and milk, and pretty much regular groceries. What I needed were snacks.

Thursday I ran to Aldi and grabbed four assorted bags of “crap” and since I was low on water, two more cases of that. I breezed through that store in minutes, I was impressed. Later that day I had to go pick up a prescription and Ted wanted some soda. I wasn’t going to pay the ridiculous drug store soda price so I ran over to Stop and Shop. WHAT A NIGHTMARE!!

All I needed/wanted was soda. They were out of his Diet Pepsi, so I opted for the gigantic 3 liter of “diet cola” and got myself a diet ginger ale; the lines were insane. I don’t get mad about standing in line, like so many other people were doing. Well, it was your own fault people, you waited until 5:30pm on Thursday to go stock up; the weatherman has been talking about this storm for days…no sympathy for you.

We were ready. We had food; we had gas in the truck and for the snow blower, bring it on. Boy did Nemo bring it. There was no school Friday and as the day went on Maizie started to get nervous. When she gets nervous, she’s doesn’t know how to express it so, she gets mean, nasty and destructive. In order to keep “the calm”, the kids and I tried to watch Hotel Transylvania. The lights kept going out, which meant when they came back on, we had to wait for the cable to reboot. This was a huge stressor on the Kraus couch. We finally get to the end of the movie and it’s time for bed.

You can see the little flickers of panic in the three sets of eyes. “What if the power goes out while we’re sleeping?” “How will you know if you’re asleep?” “What if we wake up?” “What do you usually do when you wake up at night?” “Come to your room.” “So what makes tonight any different?” They all slept together in Maizie’s bed.
All passed out in Maizie's bed

Then it happened. At 1:30am, the power went out. The kids wake up and I yell, “Don’t open the fridge?” Then the cold hits. We have gas heat, but of course it doesn’t work without the power. When I’m cold, I’m less than pleasant. Ted told me it was going to be out for about 6-8 hours. (I really think he makes some stuff up, just so I won’t go postal.)
That's snow and ice on the inside

He had been outside clearing the neighborhood of snow along with the usual hardworking neighbors. I stayed inside and tried to explain why the kids were not going to play outside if there was no heat. We ate all the bags of “crap” for lunch and the kids just made a mess of the house. I didn’t care, I was cold. Later on (about 1 o’clock) we all took a nap Ingalls’s style and when we woke up and there still wasn’t power, I lost all hope. We were going to freeze to death, not really but I was unhappy.
Four blankets listening to The Hobbit

We had peanut butter and jelly for dinner and sat in the living room while Ted read the kids The Hobbit. By 8:30pm, I slipped myself a mickey so I would sleep. All three kids were going to sleep in our bed with me and Ted (volunteering for it) was going to sleep on the couch. By 10pm I had had it, it had to be way below 50 degrees in the house. Our thermostat only goes down to 50 and it was there before the sun went down. We were piling on the comforters, getting cozy.

At 10:30pm I turned to see the time. My other clock was flashing, I couldn’t believe it. I turned and looked at the TV, the little red light was on and the neighbor’s outside light was on…WOO HOO!!! WE HAD POWER!!! I couldn’t believe it, I was so happy. I turned on the Disney channel so the kids could watch TV while they were in bed; it was going to take a while for the house to warm back up.

Being the social media junkie that I am, I jumped right on the computer and started typing. I felt as though I had so much catching up to do.

14 comments:

  1. Love your Nemo journey! My husband and I had my 87-year old Mom from Friday morning until Saturday night. Everything was nice (tons of food, etc.), even when the power went out, because my husband had bought a generator Friday morning. Problem was that our heat is oil-fired, so it got cold really fast. We had ceramic heaters keeping my Mom warm as we watched DVD's, but just getting to the bathroom for my Mom was so, so cold. I heard that part of Cranston had power, so I called my Mom's friend in her senior complex for an update and they had POWER, HEAT and all the good stuff. We braved the dark drive from Bristol to Cranston and got my Mom all settled. Our power wasn't restored until last night... almost 48 hours. All's well that ends' well!

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  2. Fun hearing your adventure in Nemo! We lucked out and kept power this time, but haven't been the lucky ones in the past storms. So glad you have power and heat back! Yeah, what happened to our early spring? :)

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  3. I feel so spoiled that we didn't lose power. Brrr. At least it wasn't days. Glad to hear everyone is safe and warm now...and mommy can get back to blogging. :)

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  4. Oh man! I feel lucky because we kept our power. Last time we lost it for 4 days. I am so glad to hear you guys are okay! It is so hard with these darn storms!

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  5. I'm with you girl! We lost power too during Blizzard Nemo and it was quite an adventure. I love your pictures. I ate more carbs than a family of five. And that was on the first day. It was so stressful, but MEMORABLE too. Loved this. Stay warm!

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  6. I was so afraid we were going to lose power! It kept blinking and did go off for about 2 minutes but came back on. We survived without power for 4 days after the last hurricane so I wasn't concerned about that, it was the lack of heat!! Glad you power and heat came back on!!!

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  7. I can weather a storm in the warm weather months but in the cold it's scary! Glad to hear you're back up & running!

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  8. Ugh, that sounds incredibly unpleasant. I'm like you - I'm no fun to be around when I'm cold. So glad the power came back on relatively quickly :) LOVE the pic of the kids sleeping in the same bed.

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  9. I think naming this storm Nemo was ridiculous! I literally LOL'd at your hubby making things up so you don't lose it... I swear my hubby does, too. We were int he same boat... I had people asking me why we didn't go out and enjoy it. Ummmm... because it's below 50* IN my house and I have a baby. People are silly. We got power sometime around 3am on Sunday. Love snow HATE power outages!

    I'm glad you had snacks and could eat properly during the power outage. By proper I mean terribly, which is the only way to survive! :)

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  10. I'm so glad your power went back on! I loved reading this - thanks!

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  11. Luckily we did not loose power here in NY but we prepared for it by bringing in a ton of firewood for the fireplace. My parents however did loose power for about 24 hours and they too were freezing!

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  12. Glad you got your heat back! We lucked out this storm (and with Sandy too actually) ~ I guess it made it for our week without power from Irene!!! Crazy weather here in RI!! And we have more snow coming on Saturday!

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