Down Came the Snow

And out went the power.

Five days now, and counting.

But if the power hadn’t gone out

If it hadn’t snowed.

I wouldn’t have borrowed a generator. Wouldn’t have learned how to use it. Would still be a little afraid.

Wouldn’t have gone to the auto parts store, and felt a sense of blessed relief when the first employee who saw me after I walked in, apparently looking a little shell-shocked and distressed about where in that big store the gas cans resided, asked me, so politely, “Are you looking for a gas can?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

I must have looked that out of place. Not like someone who was working on her car for fun on a Thursday afternoon, bopping in to get the right replacement part.

He then disappeared into the back of the store, deep into the bowels, and returned five minutes later with my most new very precious thing: a five gallon gas can. Apparently, most of the world in these parts has been flocking to stores, desperately searching for generators, and then looking for gas cans in order to power those things. Fifty thousand of us have been without power here. I found one on my first try, in a store that I traditionally avoid as much as possible, because it is full of the auto parts, which I know very little about, and also the auto parts salesmen, who sometimes tend to be a little man-splainy.

If the power hadn’t gone out, I wouldn’t have gotten help from a man at the gas station, who was kneeling on the ground at the bank of pumps behind me, filling up eight smaller gas cans.

“What (the heck!) do I do with this thing? Is there a trick?” I asked him.

He talked me down off my “I know nothing about gas cans and really do not want to blow up the car” ledge, and I got the can filled, and safely stowed for transport back up the hill to snow country.

There are a lot of safety mechanisms on new gas cans these days, to keep fumes from leaking, to keep gas from spilling. This is all wonderful! Except it makes it tricky to actually fill the generator in the dark. That didn’t go so well last night. But this morning? Victory! Such sweetness as the nozzle fit into the reservoir of the generator, just like it was supposed to, and gas flowed, and the empty generator sputtered to life, so here I am now, with WiFi and writing and able to actually post, too.

If the power hadn’t gone out, I probably wouldn’t have finished my two library books. I was at a boring part of one and would have given up. In the end, I enjoyed it very much. Also, my son and daughter and I wouldn’t have spent hours at the kitchen table with the camping lantern, playing the new card games that I bought for Christmas. I almost always buy card games for Christmas (stocking stuffers!) but sometimes we don’t actually play them. We did this time. Because, really, there was nothing else to do. Both games were great! Highly recommended. One simply called “The Game,” which is a cooperative game that you play as a team. The other called “No Thanks!” which goes quickly and has chips that make you feel like you are playing poker or some other cool game, and that everyone took turns winning.

My daughter and I had plans for this break. She is heading back to LA on New Year’s Day.

We were going to go thrift shopping at our favorite thrift store in Reno. She was going to get a haircut. We were going to get Indian buffet, and hit the after Christmas sale at JC Penney, where we traditionally have had great luck. She was going to take care of getting her Real ID at the DMV.

None of this happened. Instead, she got her Covid booster, and maybe got a little Covid from her brother, and so did I. We had Christmas, and the day after Christmas it started to snow, and it was so lovely! I waxed poetic in my daily writing about how nice it was, to have it snow when you have nowhere you have to go, nothing you have to do.

Ha!

The next night, it snowed three feet at our relatively balmy, tropical elevation (just 3200 feet), a storm so strong that I-80, our major interstate, was brought to its knees and shuttered for days. Hundreds of trees are down on the power lines. Thousands of people are still without power. We are on day five now.

It wasn’t the break we planned, but it was the break we got. Time together playing cards at the kitchen table, a journey into the world of gas cans and generators, working together as a family team to get wood from the wood pile outside, which is now buried under several feet of snow, into the house, in front of the fire, where it could dry out a little and continue to keep the woodstove running.

Mostly, I’m remembering on this last day of the year that no matter how tough life seems, it can always, always be so much worse. So we are not at the mall today, snapping up bargains at the after Christmas sales. Hard to believe that people are at Bath and Body Works and Old Navy when we are mucking around in snow boots and pining for a hot shower. But we have a borrowed generator, and funds to fuel it, and also, quite providentially, located a gas can, thanks to the employee angel at the auto parts store. The fat cat is happily asleep on my bed, and we have blankets and are warm, and the New Year will find us tonight, whether the power is back on or not.

Here’s to a happy New Year, with all that it will bring, both good and bad, and here’s to realizing once again that sometimes the things that are the hardest sometimes leave us with the most unexpected gifts.

Happy New Year, friends.