I knew this was going to be a strange Christmas but it has turned out to be stranger than strange!
It was "scheduled" to be strange because my Mate wasn't going to be here, being the Good Son and going to be with his Mother on her first Christmas as a widow. But to make it even stranger the weather has been wicked windy. The lights went out at 10:15 a.m. on Christmas Eve. All day long I revisesd assessments on how I would get dinner cooked. The plan had been to put the fully cooked ham in the crock pot and cook it on slow for 6 hours, resulting in lots of gravy fixings and a nice hot ham. The other elements of dinner, mashed potatoes, peas, cranberry sauce and Chocolate Satin Pie (from Safeway) didn't require electricity or at most, a small amount.
As the day wore on and time to put the ham in the crock pot passed I began to make contigency plans. Okay--so... if the power comes on by 1:00 I'll still have 4 hours to cook the ham. Then, if the power comes on by 2:00 I'll turn it on high and still have time. At 12:30 I got tired of trying to make deals with the Power Gods and made one last deal: I'll go for a LONG walk--all the way to the mini-mart and back. I'll be a really good citizen, take shopping bags with me and pick up trash on the way. I'll take my Netflix and put it in the blue mailbox at the mini-mart. It'll take me a good hour and a half, but by the time I get back around 2:00 surely the power will be on and I can proceed with my Christmas Eve dinner plans. Looking back on this it makes no sense at all but I had to do SOMETHING!!! I did this. I walked all the way up there--I loaded one whole grocery sack with trash from the right side of the road--I dropped the Flix in the box. I peered down the hiway to see if electricity workmen were fixing the offending line and saw nothing. I trudged back, my feet hurting by this time, picking up trash on the other side of the road and humming "Deck the halls with bags of garbage, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la". A woman stopped her car to say, "God bless you for picking up the trash!" I wondered if I looked pathetic in my leather man's hat and no makeup. She must have wondered why this woman had nothing better to do than pick up trash on Christmas Eve.
I got home with my two very full bags of aluminum cans, Taco Bell cups, straws, those awful yellow plastic straps that are around bundles of magazines (who throws so many of these on the side of the road?), beer bottles, cigarette packages, kleenex and GUESS WHAT? The lights were not on. The bargain didn't work. The Power Gods weren't paying attention. So I took the next logical step. I took a nap. Or tried to. All that walking had me too pepped up to really sleep. I laid there formulating the last ditch plan. If the lights aren't on by 4:00 I pack up the whole thing, potatoes, ham, rolls, pie and take it to my Mom's house to cook.
The happy ending to this dark tale is that the lights finally came back on at 3:30. I slammed the ham into the crock pot, turned it on high, ran to shower my stinky-trash-picking body, peeled the potatoes, vacuumed the worst spots, turned on the Christmas Tree lights and hopped in the car to go pick up my Mom and my Brother. Christmas Eve was saved!
Did I fail to mention that when our lights are out we can't run water or flush the toilet? And it also happens that our wood stove is in pieces and the oven on my gas range is on the fritz? The lights being out was just the coup de gras!
And now it is Christmas Day, after what turned out to be a lovely Christmas Eve, and the lights are out again. I woke up at 5:30 to howling winds and at 6:30, boink, they were out again. It's mid-day now and the PSE has no ETA on when they will come back on. SHIT. And, oh yeah, Merry Christmas.
4 comments:
Well, there you go ... being adventurous. Luckily, we were 'powered up' except for a forty-five second blackout early on. One blast of wind did send one of my trees into the westerly neighbor's yard and did a little damage to his wood fence. He said 'not to worry', as he had a friend who was going to come over and saw it up for the firewood.
It was pretty primitive for awhile. Water out of bottles, not flushing, wash hands in a bowl of saved water, no heat but it wasn't cold outside. Put on sweaters. Was able to make food as the stove is gas and I can light it with a match. It was getting old at about 6:oo on Christmas night though!
Enuf silence already! We're far enough into 2006 to have died in a car wreck, contacted AIDS, and/or assassinated a prominent butthead ... and you are still riding along on a late December posting?
Okay, Jim, I'll do my best. I remembered what I had wanted to write about. It ain't sexy or intellectual but it's something.
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