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Posts Tagged ‘Power Outages’

Powerless

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on March 9, 2013| 2 Comments »

Today is day 4. My hope is running out since we live on the borderline of 2 counties, deep in the woods at the end of a power grid that supports 7 homes. Obviously, those big white Rappahanock and Dominion power trucks are busy servicing developments with hundreds of homes, so we sit and wait.

The good news is that we installed a generator right next to the heat pump when we built this house. So really I can’t complain. We have heat, hot water and even lights in certain rooms. My refrigerator is still running and so is the microwave; I can even cook on top of the gas range once we light a match. What isn’t hooked up to the generator? The laundry room, the ovens, the outside lights, my office. You might say the soul of the house is in stasis – my aviary. So I plug in the laptop in the kitchen overnight, and write upstairs on battery power.

We adjust, we accommodate in a crisis. I asked Bob if the dogs slept with us in Rumson after the NoName storm, when we lost power for 6 days in December. I remember the kids piled into our big bed since we had an electric blanket hooked up to a portable generator. Did the Corgis jump up and snuggle with us on those 2 dog nights? It was an adventure when we were living in the Berkshires and a Noreaster swept through. Cooking on the woodstove, cross country skiing in the backyard, we felt like pioneers, like rugged, sturdy New Englanders, even though we were both suburbanite refugees.

When the Bride was born, the Flapper came to stay for awhile. I proudly told her that we have this ingenious, solar powered clothes dryer. It was the 70s, passive solar was all the rage, along with woodstoves for ex-hippies. My Mother looked at my clothes line, and promptly called up the hardware store and ordered a Maytag clothes dryer. That’s the way she was, in fact listening to all the latest interviews with Sandra Day O’Connor on her book tour, I am reminded of the Flapper. Yes, she was that acerbic, that opinionated, that sure of herself.

Listening to the Justice tell Terry Gross that “NO” being discriminated against as a woman lawyer, being told by the 40 law firms she called out of law school that they didn’t hire women, and then taking a job for no pay and being put in the same office as the secretary had absolutely no effect on her deliberations as a Supreme Court Justice was downright stunning. Did you hear this on NPR? I loved this lady, she doesn’t look back.
http://www.npr.org/2013/03/05/172982275/out-of-order-at-the-court-oconnor-on-being-the-first-female-justice

This weekend it’s supposed to be somewhere in the 60s, and the crocus that had just popped up before the snowfall, will open their pretty blue flowers to an early spring. Bob said the Corgis didn’t sleep with us, that we invited them but they eventually jumped down. I guess it was too crowded. Since I was behind on the laundry when the storm hit, today I’ll be collecting quarters and heading to the nearest laundromat. I wonder how the Flapper did all the laundry for a family of 7 (not counting me in this) on a Monday, and the ironing on Tuesday. Do I even know where my iron is? I need to start packing for my next trip to the Music City, where I will whisper to the Love Bug about her tenacious and powerful Great Grandmother.

Here is the view since the storm hit:
photo copy

photo copy 4

photo copy 3

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If It’s Tuesday

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on July 9, 2012| 2 Comments »

I must be blogging. But instead of typing contentedly in my cozy aviary office, I’ve moved my laptop to the kitchen table. Why, you may ask, after all those years reporting from a corner in my dining room would I move back into my home’s food court? Simple, it’s the heat!

Yesterday the temps were soaring in the 105 degree range…again, which meant my third floor office was hovering around 85 plus. The builders of our “not so big house” warned me; “You’ve got to put a ceiling fan up there Ma’am.” If you are over 30 in the South, you are automatically called Ma’am. I’m almost getting used to it. But did I listen to those men in tool belts? I was amused to hear their tales of deer and wild turkey sightings, and how if they had their way my office would be a gun turret. Of course not, a ceiling fan, no way. My concern was having a breeze on my neck. I didn’t want a breeze from a ceiling fan which would lead to a crook spasm in my neck and before you know it, a frozen shoulder! And no guys, we don’t allow even bow hunting on the property.

OK so I admit it. They were right. A ceiling fan in the South is like a mud room in New England. Not everybody has one, they are not a necessity, but boy does it make life easier. I have a friend who has to have a fan over her bed. She claims that she just cannot sleep since menopause hit without that little breeze. And we did install one on the sleeping porch; a last minute idea. It just seemed so natural to put a fan out there to mix up the scent of lilacs with the sounds of tree frogs on a hot summer night. And like most last minute ideas, it turned out to be absolutely perfect…like installing the built-in generator.

Some people in Albemarle County have been without power during this record-setting heat spell going on 6 or 7 days. In fact, so many lost their food from melting refrigerators and freezers that our local Food Pantry desperately needs donations – preferably canned or box foods. I’m packing up a box today to deliver. We only lost our power for a few hours, and our trusty generator just automatically started up. It saved my life during our second year in the house when Mother Nature dumped 2 snow storms on us measuring over 2 feet of snow and ice each time. Bob went to the hospital early and didn’t leave, which is what directors do when they know other docs won’t be able to dig their way out of their driveway and if they could, the roads were still buried. VA road crews were not prepared for the magnitude of those storms. I never could have lasted 7 days without power in the freezing cold, without that generator. Anyone thinking of building a house today, or renovating their existing house, I have just two things to say: 1) generator and 2) ceiling fans! Mercifully cooler temperatures are predicted this week. Since I wasn’t blogging back then, and to usher in the drop in temps, I thought you might like to see some pictures of Buddha and Bean in the historic snowfall.

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Power to the People

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on July 1, 2012| 2 Comments »

We all know that scene in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy looks at Toto and says “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.” Well, late Friday afternoon, when the temperature had peaked at 108, I had a feeling my house might just be blown off its foundation and end up in Kansas!

Gov McDonnell declared a state of emergency for VA after a series of violent “boundary” thunderstorms ripped through these parts leaving 6 people dead; 2 in our county were struck by trees. Bob was putting a foot in the hot tub when he looked up and decided to come inside. Usually, he likes to sit on the deck and watch a storm cross over the mountain range, so this was unusual. We lost power but our trusty generator switched right on, then we lost our Dish satellite and only had news via the Weather Channel on my iPhone. Oh, and we lost our land lines too. Then it got very, very dark and our windows, the shiny, beautiful clean windows I’d just washed for the party, were being pummeled by what, hail?

When you are married to an ER doctor, you get used to a certain laissez faire. Unless you are dying, nothing much can bother him. “HA, I was right, you have Zoster!” he might say smiling. Or, “It’s only a GI bug, you’ll feel better tomorrow.” When I ran in with a limp child after falling off a bike, and he said call the ambulance, I knew it was serious. So Friday night, when he put on his work boots, started gathering flashlights and opening windows, I have to admit, I started to panic just a little. First he’s not on the deck watching the storm, second he came in from his beloved hot tub, and third, he NEVER opens windows, but he said he wanted to equalize the pressure. That unbearable heat was being whipped up by a cold wind, a wind that hit straight-line gusts of over 80 MPH while the lightening played out over our Blue Ridge mountain range like some evil horror show.
http://www2.dailyprogress.com/news/2012/jun/30/thunderstorms-leave-2-dead-thousands-without-power-ar-2025298/

What do you do in a disaster? Some people were made for these things, ER docs, firefighters, pilots, medics. It’s in their DNA. They are the opposite of risk-averse, they are risk-in-love. I asked Bob what he would have done on that Italian cruise ship that went aground recently, would he have started climbing up? Of course, he would not have listened to the officers telling people to go back to their cabins. It made me think of one of the Flapper’s famous sayings, “Signs are for sheep.” Yesterday morning he was doing his chain saw buzzing best all over our driveway, we had 3 trees down.
Then when we went to Starbucks for a break, they had no milk. He went over to the only other open store in the whole shopping center, bought milk and half and half, and gave it to the baristas. People were wandering around like zombies, trying to find a cool shelter, trying to find relief from the massive power outages. “Do you know if they have any hamburger in there?” one nervous woman asked me while we walked to the car. I started to tell her they have milk, but no yogurt, and saw in her eyes she didn’t care. She was after meat.

I felt like I was in an episode of Doomsday Preppers! Later, on Bob’s 3 to 11 shift, the ER treated over 100 patients, many with heat exhaustion. We have 2.5 million people without power in the state. “This was the largest non-hurricane power outage in Virginia history,” McDonnell said. And the fifth highest ever in state history. Well people, it’s July 1st, please try and stay out of emergency rooms. You know why, right? All the new ER interns are starting fresh out of medical school. They just got their long white coats and are still learning how to write a prescription. But if you do find yourself on a gurney, give ’em a break and try to be a patient patient. Hum “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

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