December 1st. A bit of sun peeking through the windows. I knew something was wrong when all of a sudden I could hear David snoring, and Eli smacking his droopy poop-eating jowls on his dog bed.
No no! All wrong! Where was my white noise? My beloved sound machine had died?
Frantically, I seized the sound machine and began pushing buttons. No go! Catastrophe! I cannot be expected to sleep in a house where I can hear other living, breathing creatures! Who could expect such a thing from me?
I fumbled for the alarm clock — no friendly glowing Santa-red numbers. And the air, well, the bedroom air should not be so cold.
Pushing the curtains aside I saw white. Snow everywhere. Power out! The terrible succession of thoughts, collapsing like Dominoes and crushing a Candyland route of brain cells:
No furnace!
No heat!
No stove!
No coffee!
No DVD player or TV (this one made me gasp aloud as I heard H-Bomb stirring in the next room and thought MY GOD SATURDAY MORNING WHAT WILL WE DO WITH THE CHILD)!
No email (another gasp)!
No phone (okay, not bad).
I prayed that the cold would envelop Hattie’s head and lull her into a nice hypothermic sleep for just another hour or two. I was willing to drape a German Shepherd over her if necessary.
No go. Little Girlfriend Was Up. I dispatched David and Eli to deal with the H-Bomb Morning Situation. Red clean fluffy Nina, the quietest sleeper in the house, was welcome to stay and warm my tushie.
Power back on now, but the house temp is still hovering around 59 degrees. If I think warm fuzzy thoughts perhaps it will heat up more quickly.
P.S. THANK YOU TO SANTA IN NYC, you sneaky wonderful person, whoever you are.
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The combination of no DVD player and no coffee sent a chill right up my spine. Perhaps it was a sympathetic, 59 degree chill…
Possible solutions:
1. Portable, battery operated DVD player
2. Starbucks
I cannot CANNOT sleep without my noise machine. My preferred setting is “spring rain.” Every time our power goes out, I am awoken by the absence of white noise. Thank God the one I have now has battery backup.
I’m glad your power is back on. No power in winter is no good.
Starbucks….Bwahahaha. That’s rich.
I hear you on the no DVD player…
OMG….no DVD? On Saturday???
Yikes.
Stay warm, read books, make sock puppets.
No coffee? The horror, oh, the horror.
I’m more interested in Santa. (I mean, sure, if you’d gone days without power and your heinie got frostbite and you had to have a heinie transplant, I’d be all worked up, but it seems like y’all came through it ok).
What did Santa do?
that jowl smacking noise kills me in the early hours, one on the end of the bed, the other in his puppy crate, making mental notes from the older (who is many licks ahead of him) 12 year old hound at my feet. Santa please bring me a sound machine for Christmas…
NO SLEEP MACHINE???? We have 3 of those suckers muffling every click and creak and possible intruder entry and potential roof cave-in and all the other horrible things that my brain manufactures each night. I hope you are warm now.
In Bossy’s neck of the woods it was all, “Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.” And all Bossy has to show for it are a million soggy leaves deposited on her front lawn.
I didn’t endure any snow or power outages. But I DID endure a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese, and that’s way more traumatic.
we have white noise at night too. the poet has tinnitus and i have sympathetic paranoia about getting tinnitus. so the hiss is a good thing. have you heard about pink noise? Supposed to be good for people with sensitive hearing.
Also, finally, letter being posted tomorrow
I am jealous of your snow.
I was right there too and on THANKSGIVING with a 17 pound turkey roasting away in the oven. I ate only pumpkin pie instead. Kids entertained themselves with plastic bag….no kidding.
Nothing like a German Shepherd to warm a sleeping child! I think of your family and Eli often!
I have to say that some of my children’s happiest memories are from living in a little house in Vermont where the power was ALWAYS going out. It was on top of a small mountain and it snowed EVERY DAY all winter up there. We had a gas stove, and lots of candles, and when the power would go out, we would bake by candlelight. Come to think of it, those are some of MY happiest memories.
siriously, no internet?!?! how can you possibly survive!??!
i am so used to white noise now, i’m not sure i could sleep without it. plus, the baby will think he grew up by the ocean. that’s not bad, is it?
come see your little shout out!
Contrary, I believe “Santa” is a reader who donated to the BEAW fund. I could be wrong, though.
Snow days without power can be a lot of fun, if you have a gas stove and a fireplace. But with no heat at all…yeah, not so much.
Oh dear. No coffee? See this is why I keep an old camp perker and a Coleman stove….in a dire emergency, such as that, I can always send Military Man out in the yard to make coffee. One can never be too prepared.