Ice Storm

  Hallelujah!
  After five days of living in the stone age our power is finally back on. This may sound like a cliche but after nearly a week off-grid you come to realize how good we modern folks have it compared to our not-so-distant ancestors.  Actually, our lineage diverged from that of other apes six to eight million years ago. And that's a long time to live without electricity!
  The ice storm took down many of our favorite trees and all of our favorite power lines. A mere quarter inch of ice adds about 500 pounds to a wire stretched between two typical Edison poles. We were hit with almost a full inch of crystal clear so the trees and power lines had little chance. The landscape is a surreal combination of beauty and utter devastation. Nature can have a savage hand.
  Within minutes of the outage our neighborhood was humming with power generators but alas, we don't own one. Ya see, we've only had three lengthy outages in the last ten years so it's hard for us to justify the expense of a tool so seldom used. Well, we're starting to rethink that now.
  When the power first went out we were settling in to watch a borrowed library video -- a typical cozy night in our comfortable lives. It was disappointing when the power quit but once we got out the camping gear and oil lamps it became kinda fun. It was warm enough near the fire so we slept on the floor in front of the hearth. But after a couple of days the fun was fading and without water our toilets were redolent of sewage. So we packed buckets with snow and set them by the fire to melt. Then we poured water into the toilet tanks for to flush.
  On the third day (Christmas) we treated ourselves with showers down at Mom's house. A luxury, that!
  The next night our power came back on and we started dancing and singing. But in less than a minute it was gone again. Jubilation turned to despair - another cold, dark night ahead. Grumble, grumble, grumble...
  When it came back on 24 hours later we tried not to get excited and braced ourselves for more disappointment. After an hour passed we were pretty confident that the ordeal was over. But we didn't turn on the TV since we weren't quite ready to resume our old way of life. We were able to spend the night in our own bed with an electric blanket and got our first shiver-less sleep in nearly a week.
  It's funny. As this normalcy returns to our lives there comes with it a tinge of guilt over our complacency. We really are becoming soft. But this test almost proves we have the mettle to meet the next challenge. And that feels pretty good.
  I wrote this on the library computer because we have no phone or Internet yet but you know what?
I kind of like it.