Waking Up Without Power

Two weeks ago on Wednesday, I woke up to a dark house.

It wasn’t just me. Over the course of a few days, our regional power company PG&E turned off power to more than 500,000 households across California.  If you figure that an average of three people live in each house, then that’s more than a million people. Some estimates put it as high as two million. A lot of these folks were in our Sierra foothills area. It was necessary,  PG&E said, because of low humidity, high winds, and extreme fire danger.  They didn’t want a repeat of last year’s firestorm which started from a downed PG&E power line and killed 88 people in the Paradise, California area and also destroyed nearly 14,000 homes and most of the town.

So that Wednesday morning, we got dressed in the dark. We had flashlights and a lantern and ice in the freezer that I asked my husband to bring home at the last minute the day before (how proud I was of us! How well we were coping!).

We only made minimal preparations for the potential outage, though; PG&E had already contacted us once this year, warning of a possible shutdown, which never happened. I wasn’t sure that this one would occur, either.

I was wrong. So that morning, my son shone a flashlight into the bathroom mirror so I could put on my makeup, because apparently, makeup is important, even on days when you wake up in the dark. I couldn’t have my morning cup of hot tea, but leftover iced tea gave me a caffeine boost, no matter that it was chilly outside. I grabbed hard boiled eggs for breakfast, quickly, in order to keep the refrigerator cold for as long as possible.

I rode into town with my husband, because I didn’t have enough gas in my car to get to town and home again. The electric shutdown spread to the city where we usually shop and get gas; none of the gas stations where we normally filled up were open. You evidently need electricity to pump gas.  I should have realized this. We drove my son to his school, which also didn’t have power, but which was in session anyway, because the intrepid staff was ready to power through (no pun intended) and teach as best as they could.

My husband dropped me off at the retreat center where I go for my weekly prayer meeting. They also didn’t have power, but that was OK, because you don’t need electricity to pray. He then drove a few miles down the road to the nearest town where power was on. He said there were long lines for gas and even longer lines for coffee. Apparently, the good people of our mountain towns descended en masse to the nearest locale where coffee and gas were still available. He managed to get gas, and a deli sandwich and Chinese food from the Safeway for dinner. Finally home at the end of the day, we lit the lanterns, and settled in to watch an episode of one of my son’s favorite shows on the iPad, which he hooked up to his phone’s hot spot.  It got dark and cold quickly. Minutes later, I was asleep on the couch under a pile of blankets. It was barely 7:30 pm.

The next morning, I woke up to a dark house. Power outage, day two.

This was when the Grumpies moved in.

So much for the peppy attitude and  pioneer spirit that had served me well the day before.

The cold that I was just starting to get? It was worse.  I couldn’t make hot tea. I couldn’t take a hot shower.  I couldn’t lay on the couch and watch Netflix, which was the thing I wanted to do most. We were still trying to keep the refrigerator cold, in order to save the food that was there, but things were starting to warm, even with the ice which we had so smartly remembered to buy days before. Nearby gas stations were still closed.  Local banks were still only open to one customer at a time, and you better know your account number, or there’s nothing they can do for you. The ATM machines still weren’t working.  The library was closed. The supermarkets were closed. McDonalds was closed. All the people who work at these places? There was no work. If you depended on every day’s wages to pay your bills? You were out of luck.  It was two days of unexpected, unwanted time off, two days without pay.

I tried to focus on all I had to be grateful for. We still had running water. We could flush our toilets. Many people around didn’t, because their water came from wells and wells don’t work without power.

How many people on the planet would have gratefully traded places with me, to have my comfortable home with running water, warm blankets, and candles, even without electricity?

I confess, though, that I didn’t have much luck staying in that that place of gratitude. Especially when we woke up the third day, and the lights were still off. By this time, some surrounding towns had power back. We didn’t. My son’s school finally cancelled classes; they had persevered two days without electricity, and a third one was too much. My husband remembered it was trash day and encouraged me to do a sweep through the refrigerator, throwing out everything that had gotten warm, in spite of our best efforts.  I filled up the trash can.

We finally got our power back late Friday evening. We went nearly three days without power.

In the big picture, it was mostly a massive inconvenience for us, though I know that it cost others much more. I am thinking especially of grocery stores, who had to throw out multiple dumpsters worth of frozen and refrigerated foods, and all the other businesses in the region that had to close unexpectedly. For me, it just meant mornings without hot tea, an afternoon without a Netflix movie, a few dollars of condiments that will need to be replaced.  If a major fire was somehow prevented because of the shut off, wasn’t it a small price to pay, for all the lives and property saved?

Still, I am surprised by how shaken the whole episode left me. By only the second day without power, I was feeling isolated, disconnected from the rest of the world, even a little depressed.  I tried to do the things I normally do when I have a day at home: there was no reason that I couldn’t write on my charged laptop,  no reason I couldn’t get outside and work in the garden. I didn’t, though.  I wandered around the house feeling lost. I can’t tell you how happy I was when the power finally came back Friday evening. It was like life could start again. At least until the next outage. Which could come as soon as tomorrow.