Roughing It at Home

My mom and sister, Ellie, came to visit from Utah this last week: a trip bookended by the natural wonders of Virginia. Right before they arrived, we lost our power Wednesday evening, which also meant we lost our water since we had no electricity to pump it out of the well.

If I may digress for a moment, this provided several valuable lessons in emergency preparedness.
1- It is great to have flashlights, but keeping them all in a central location and checking that you have the right size of batteries will make them much more useful during a power outage. (It is also nice to have some battery powered lanterns, since handheld flashlights do not really light up a room very well.)
2- Power outages provide an excellent opportunity for cleaning out all of the scary things you have been ignoring in the back of the fridge and freezer. Having coolers on hand is the simplest method for trying to preserve several hundred dollars of food when the fridge is not working. But, you need to have enough and hope stores are open so you can purchase ice / dry ice.
3- It is great to have stored water, especially in small, usable quantities, but a few more jugs with spigots for each bathroom / kitchen would be handy.



So, Thursday I ran around to stores purchasing more coolers, ice, water jugs, a couple more lanterns and the needed sizes of batteries, since the prognosis from the power company was that it would take 48 MORE hours to get our power restored. I let Mia and Maggie eat a whole pan of Jello, since I could not keep it cold, and I called my mom and sister to warn them that they may be coming into a bit of an inhospitable environment. Fortunately, by 5 pm Thursday evening our power returned -- only 26 hours total, and I was sure grateful not to be sleeping on the basement floor in sleeping bags, trying to keep cool that night, although Mia was a little disappointed!

My mom was here for the hottest days of the year in Virginia -- again, it makes running water and air conditioning all the more sweet! We determined it was just too warm for any other activity and took the girls to the pool and the water park on Saturday and Monday. Then, on Tuesday, as we were preparing food for our planned cookout in Prince William Forest, the rain storms began. We decided to make the best of it and eat at home, while Jeffrey bested the rain to grill up our hotdogs. But, just in case we were missing the real ambiance of a campout, halfway through the power went out again!

Mia was ecstatic. And, we were now prepared. We pulled out the jugs of water, flashlights and lanterns (all of which had batteries), toasted marshmellows for smores on the gas stove, and played charades as it got dark. That night all six of us had a flashlight to go to bed with, and thank heavens it cooled of a bit and a breeze picked up, because sleeping on the couches on the main floor and in the basement it was actually quite pleasant.

Despite our improved efforts and better supplies, I was so grateful that right as I was pulling on my clothes to run to the store for ice at seven the next morning the power came back on. (Those flying back to Utah that afternoon with my mom should also have been very glad, because we all got a good shower.) It was such fun and a HUGE help to have family in town, and -- lucky for them -- they didn't miss out on roughing it with us in Virginia.





PS- For Father's Day I bought Jeffrey a power inverter that will allow us to plug electric cords into our car. Then we can charge our cell phones, the portable DVD player (which ran out of battery power during the first storm and came in very handy), the massive flashlights Jeffrey has (which do no good in an emergency since they don't keep a charge), walkie talkies (which again are no help in an emergency if they can't be charged) and a host of other useful items in such situations, or on a camping trip, or just driving in the car on a road trip.

PPS- My wish list for future emergency preparedness purchases: a battery powered fan (we have a portable heater, but I had never thought before about portable cooling - duh!), a phone with a cord (that cute retro silver one I want for my kitchen is no longer a luxury; it is a necessity so that we can have phone service during a power outage -- right?), a generator (bigger ticket item, but would be oh, so nice).