Jake and I had just settled in to watch a movie Friday night — we were making our way through the abysmally bad previews to the movie Jack and Jill starring Adam Sandler — when the power went out. The DVD shorted and the house went dark. We waited a few minutes, looking at each other through the darkness. The power went back on. We restarted the DVD and waded through all the bad previews again. Right when the movie opened to Adam Sandler’s insanely moneyed lifestyle depicted in all his recent films, the power went out again. I glanced out the window and noticed the leaves flittering across the window and trees swaying back and forth in the front yard. With no lights or DVD capabilities, we decided to venture out to the front porch and “watch the wind” and if there is a more “down home” activity than wind watching I’ll be a cast member on Hee Haw.
We headed outside and sat down on the front porch. Tree tops surged angrily overheard. Branches skittered across the front yard. June’s “fun tent” — a little collapsible tent she plays with outside — rolled across the yard like tumbleweed, making us laugh. The wind blew harder. The towering oak trees across the road lurched to and fro. Another great cracking sound was heard. The trees now blew almost parallel to the road. We both stood up. A giant crack split the air. “Get in the house! Get in the house!” Jake yelled. We both ran inside and waited. I debated fetching June from her crib lest a tree crash into her room. After what seemed like an eternity but was probably more like 10 minutes, we eased our way outside again to assess the damage. It was too dark and too rainy to do much good. Sooner or later we went to bed.
When we awoke, we discovered seven trees had fallen or cracked on our property, two on top of the barn though thankfully none of the baby chicks were hurt. And no trees fell on our house. A power line was draped right across my car. We had no power and no water. It was only 8 a.m. and already 80 degrees. Our corn was flattened.
There are many, many reasons why I’m happy I married Jake, and one of those reasons became ultra apparent this weekend: Dude is always prepared. Within four minutes of the power outage, he had brought forth three super powered industrial flashlights and headlamps. Bright and early the next morning he had plugged in both of our generators, managed to track down 10 gallons of gas (no easy feat in a town where the gas lines snaked down the block) to bring power back to our refrigerators and freezers, and he even managed to scour the last switch-plug thingie from Lowes to bring power to our water pump, allowing us to run water.
We’re now on our third day without power and with Jake around, it’s not so terrible. It’s actually kinda normal. While others around us are sweltering due to lack of AC, we don’t much notice the heat because we don’t use AC in the first place .
If there is one downside to the power outage adventure, it’s this: Right after Jake switched back on the water pump via one of our two generators he looked at me and said, “I don’t ever want to hear you complain about me buying too many tools and equipment again.”
Great. He’s gonna splurge on that super powered dump truck. I feel it.
{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
We have a friend who “collects” equipment. His wife is forever on at him about the ridiculousness of it all… until last summer, when Hurricane Irene and her flooding dragged a mobile home off its foundation and deposited it on a busy road. The friend, his wife, and my husband drove a tractor, a backhoe, and a bulldozer down to the trailer and pushed it off the road, thereby allowing emergency vehicles to pass by. After that, he said the same thing to her that Jake said to you.
Glad you guys made out ok. Go Jake!
That corn will be standing back up soon, probably already is. Our small patch was flattened by the same storm ( Maryland version) on Friday and was looking good this morning.
I have a MacGyver too.. the problem is that a lot of his stuff can only be run by him:) This means that the 30KW generator that will run the whole house can’t be run without him around. There is some complicated sequence of moving jumper cables and switches and load management that I would be terrified to try to take on.. so when he had to leave at midnight on Sunday, my power went with him. Unfortunately, I can’t make him not work just so I can have power. We have two freezers full of meat too! I am hoping that they will last another day or so if I don’t open anything up.. they are pretty big solid pieces.. so hopefully they won’t thaw or at least not very much! The fridge and freezer may need to be emptied out though if I don’t have power back tonight.
It will be a hot sleep without power.. unfortunately, I think it is just me and a few neighbors on the down leg of electricity.. so it may be a while before they get to us.. ugh!!!
Oh.. and don’t ever go out to survey storm damage “during” a storm.. that’s when a lot of people get creamed!
I married a farm-boy eagle scout. There’s nothing that can’t be fixed or at least temporarily cobbled together and he’s always prepared for everything. The trade-off is many, many tools and plenty of equipment. I only mind when he won’t share his toys with me!
Yikes! Having never seen a storm like that I can only imagine how nerve-wracking it would be. We’re in earthquake country here, which is its own kind of big-scary.
I hear the same thing from my husband about tools all the time. Actually, I think handy equals hot. Lucky me!
You don’t use AC in the first place? Oh my. I do love my AC. Your story sounds a lot like the way it was in Indiana this weekend, too. We got heavy storms that came quick and not enough rain to be really helpful.
It’s wonderful that your house was spared, but losing mature trees is always a shame.
You are a lucky woman to have a man like Jake home again. Give him a BIG kiss. Isn’t it wonderful to know that everything will be alright?
So he makes awesome ice cream sandwiches and is excellent at everything else? Yep, sounds like the Jake I once knew. I bet that corn will taste good!
I guess that WILL be a tough argument—–glad everyone is safe!
So glad you are all safe. Reminds me of both our outages here last fall – a hurricane in September and a freak snow storm in October which left us with a combined 14 days without power. It was very, very, terrible. I get butterflies in my stomach just thinking about yours. But unfortunately, I think these freak storms are going to be more of the norm instead of the exception. So glad you have Jake. Wish I had one like yours.
We are in southern WV and did the same thing! We were trying to watch something from the DVR and the power blinked enough to knock out the DirecTV receiver and then it blinked again and since those things take a while to reboot we just gave up. Then we saw the trees whipping around so I unplugged a bunch of stuff and we all went to the front porch to “watch the wind”, which was coming from the wrong direction. The trees aren’t used to bending that way so I was worried. Lucky for us though nothing broke. We didn’t lose power. We did lose land line phone and internet service until Monday night though. Some idiots stole the generator from our phone service substation, TWICE! I am glad you are okay. Oh and the wind did break off two of my tomato plants. Not a lot of drama though.
Glad you have the generators. We’re swapping a generator back and forth with my parents to keep the fridge and freezer cold enough to not spoil food, but no water. I’m out of town with the kids, but Tom has had to resort to sponging off at his office in town. But he’s catching up on work so that he can enjoy a little AC. It is true though. If you don’t have AC to begin with, it’s not so bad when you lose power. Although I do miss the ceiling fans.
I’m not sure what I’d rather have–a power outage in the dead heat of summer, or one like we had during the historic ice storm here a few years ago. Our outage lasted over 2 weeks, and honestly? I LOVED IT. The neighborhood really came together. We all got to know each other, because no one could go anywhere or do anything. My favorite part was when a fairly wealthy woman from down the street somehow got a hold of a generator and invited EVERYONE over to her house. At any given time, you could find thirty or so people there showering, eating (we all banded together to make amazing community-sized meals), playing games, and DRINKING. The woman had a full wine cellar, and we obliterated it over the course of the two weeks without power. At night, I went home and slept in my kitchen that I’d warmed with a burner from my stove. The ice storm, I would gladly do again (though without the damage to the trees). An outage when it’s 105 degrees? Urghhhhh….I’d just hate to lose all that venison in my freezer.