The Day After

Saturday arrived bright and sunny, beautiful blue skies, the air filled with the sound of chain saws and sirens of emergency vehicles, but still without power. The birds were chirping and flitting around like on any other spring day and the temperatures reached over 60 degrees and the big dripping began. Lovely. Unfortunately it was colder inside (we woke to a whopping 44 degrees and reached 50 by afternoon) than outside and without power there was no hot coffee, I love a cold breakfast in a cold house. The neighbors across from us had left and spent the night with relatives and the other neighbors have a working fire place. A lot of people had made use of their fireplaces and the scent of tree sap was quickly replaced with that of wood fires. We don't have a working fireplace and with seven cats in the house I doubt that we would actually dare to light a fire. I wonder if the huge amount of emergency vehicles on the move was due to people handling chain saws without being used to it and using improper means of heating.

It got so nice and warm outside that I took my knitting and sat on the back steps in the sun for a while, the cats were enjoying the sunshine in the porch which gets quite warm thanks to the plexiglass windows. I think I even have a little sunburn on my face. Around noon Del went out hunting for lunch, we did not know how much of the city was without power and which restaurants were actually operating. We have a battery operated radio but none of the local radio stations are actually broadcasting local news, all I found was stupid talk shows and bad music. He got lucky and we had barbecue for lunch.

I find it amazing and scary how much we depend on electricity. Heating, cooking, refrigeration, hot water, communication (no cell phones in our house), entertainment (okay, not completely, we do have board games and there is always knitting), light and with all the melting snow and ice, the sump pump in the basement, needless to say that our basement is currently flooded.

By late afternoon all the snow and ice was gone, except in some shady corners of the garden, plants that I was afraid had broken, turned out to be just bent under the ice and bounced back. Another cold and dark night lay ahead of us. Oh, I did mention that the power was still out, didn't I?