return from Faerie

Well, we dodged the first ice storm, the one on Sunday morning - but the heavier one of Sunday night got us good. We lost power on Sunday night and just got it back about an hour ago!

 

Since I have a well with an electric pump, it is a huge relief to get running water again. I am waiting another hour, to make sure that the water heater has done its thing, and then I am going to take an endless hot shower!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Dan's buddy came over yesterday and hot wired the furnace to the generator. I have been running outside every few hours since to refill it with gas. During the day that wasn't too bad, but it sucked at night since it was so dark and cold and snowing and I was doing it by flashlight. I am pretty tired, and will be very happy when the buddy comes back over this afternoon to unhotwire the furnace, so it can run off of electricity again instead.

 

While this entire experience was a pain - there is still great beauty in it. It is freezing cold today, but clear as a bell. The trees are still encased in ice. The sun is shining on them and turning every twig on every branch of every tree into a prism. It is like everything is covered with diamonds. It is so beautiful that it hurts. It is nearly to beautiful to be in our world - it is as though the realm of the Snow Queen in the land of Faerie has briefly overlapped out world, and left some of its haunting beauty behind.

 

This morning I called in for an emergency vacation day at work, as the power company was giving my neighborhood an estimate of at least nine hours to get the power up. I told my service chief the simple truth that I would have to stay home and keep the generator running so my pipes would not freeze. Well, the power came back early, but I have not has a shower since Sunday morning, and I am exhausted from keeping waking up to fill up the generator - so I am going to stay home anyway to take a long shower and get some sleep before going to get Dan and Steven at the airport. Not to mention that I still have to keep putting gas in the generator until the buddy comes by to unhotwire the furnace!

 

Tags: ice storm