Bending But Not Breaking – Tuesday, January 16th

84 Hours. 84 hours without electricity. And counting… With no real hope on the horizon, I’ve given up on the electricity being restored. Hopefully, when it gets turned on today, I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But it is realistic to think that it might not happen until this weekend… and today is only Tuesday.

We did receive a flicker of hope in the form of a welder/generator that gives us one surge protector to use for electricity. It was delivered yesterday thanks to my father-in-law. Getting up at 5:00 a.m. to go out into the single digit temperatures to fill it back up with gasoline is not an inviting prospect but it is running the furnace and for the first time, we were able to have one light, the TV, and the Dish Network box up and running.

The kids got to watch Spongebob Squarepants. I watched The Sopranos. We ran the computer for about half an hour and I was able to log on and check my email (thankfully nothing critical came during that time). And life went back to being a little more bearable.

Still, I have been working a lot despite a 50 mile round trip commute. A grocery store does not close for anything. So I have been here tending to fruits and vegetables and also taking care of my department. Zing! See what I did there? I eluded to… customers being… fruits. (Yeah, when you have to explain a joke it loses its appeal.)

Anyway, one of the other employees made a pretty good comment about how the employees that made the long and dangerous trips into work have been taking care of other people in the area that need water, food, batteries, candles, things of that nature but we do this at the expense of our own families. It sure would be nice to have some time to take care of our homes and our families.

But when you get dressed by the dawn’s early light and then make it home as the sun is going down, it doesn’t leave a whole lot of time for working around the house.
Right now, Amy’s biggest complaint is the condition of the house. Furniture is rearranged, extension cords are strung everywhere, and the place is in shambles. My hope is that power will get turned back on and things will get back to normal on either Thursday or Sunday (my two days off).