The View from Where I Sit

It's been slow going on my quilting project. Yesterday I timed myself. When the entire block and associated sashings and cornerstones were quilted, it had taken me a full two hours. That included having to rewind my bobbin and change out my empty spool of thread, but still... It looks as if I'm going to need to rethink my goal of one row per day.

All that microstippling is tedious work too, let me tell you. When I finished here, even vacuuming and cleaning the bathroom was sounding pretty good, and so that's what I did. And thank goodness I chose that moment in time to do so because as I was pushing the vacuum back to its designated closet, the power flickered and then went off. So...what could I do, but light my candy corn candle. Yes, the woman is always fashionable even during a heck of a storm and a (to be determined number of hours) power outage.

Mike was on his way home by then, and so I texted him that the power was out. We ended up going out for dinner, hoping the promised time of 10:30 p.m. for power to be restored would hold. When we got up this morning, this was the view from where I was sitting. Oy.

We have a 3,000-watt generator, and so Mike rigged it up to run one of the refrigerators and the freezer in the garage, which happens to be stocked with meat and other accumulated items from our CSA share. I checked the website for the power company and determined that it hadn't been updated all night. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr... Also, we moved the very soft ice cream to the now-working refrigerator. Oh yes, and we got the coffee maker working. We have our priorities and we Must. Have. Coffee. 

Our biggest problem when we lose power is that we can't run the pump for our well. That means we get exactly one flush on each toilet, and we have (I think) 200 gallons in our accumulator tank. When that's gone, the water is gone. That meant Mike couldn't take a shower before leaving for work. Not to worry, he just dunked his head into the hot tub (now a luke warm tub) to wet down his hair and rid himself of his bed head. He also ran just enough water to make himself presentable. When he left for work, he had things set up so that I could charge my electronic devices which are, obviously, critical for times like these. No wi-fi, mind you, but at least we had cell service. I actually tried to write a blog post on the Blogger app, but it kept crashing, and I gave up.

We have a gas fireplace downstairs, and so I just loaded up all my crap and went down there to ride out the primitive conditions. It gave me plenty of time to work on my big stitch hand-quilting project.

The kitties and I stayed nice and cozy, although they were obviously stressed to the hilt.

The newest update on the power company website was for power to be restored at 10:30 a.m. (Why do I get the feeling they just changed the "pm" to "am"?) Anyway, 10:30 a.m. came and went, and still no power. Finally, at around 11:10 a.m. it was back. I walked around the house turning off all the things that had been left on the evening before...and because it was a dark day yesterday, that meant pretty much everything in the house was left turned on.

Did I ever tell you about the time we were living in Phoenix in the mid 70's and the power went off during an electrical storm? Mike was traveling somewhere at the time, and this was before anybody thought back-up batteries were a good idea. It was time for bed, but I needed to get up and go to work in the morning. While I anticipated the power would come on during the night, how would I know? I was going to need to set my electric alarm clock when that happened. So, clever young girl that I was before my brains turned to applesauce, I plugged in the vacuum and turned it on. Try to imagine what it's like to be fast asleep and have the vacuum come on with all the winding up they do before they hit full pitch. Ahhhhhhh...the good old days.

So that brings me to now. Back to quilting. Excitement's over. But at least my vacuuming is done.