Yesterday afternoon, Avery and I zipped outside to get the mail around 4. What a nice afternoon. And then.....the clouds rolled in. It got incredibly dark incredibly fast. With a cold front on the move into town, it bumped right into the warm front we'd had going on here for the last few days. Yikes! The perfect storm.
With it getting so dark, Avery was acting hungry, so with Chad at a work event, we were on our own for dinner. What does that mean in our house? Spaghetti-Os! I pulled Avery's bowl out of the microwave and put her in her high chair. Her high chair is right by the back window. When I couldn't see the head and tail lights of the cars on Old Hickory from the window, I went in for a closer look. When the lightning flashed, all I could see was swirling wind and rain.
I very quickly rolled the high chair to the safest interior space in our house and then the power went out. It was pitch black. I managed to keep Avery calm by telling her that the lightning was God taking pictures of us. The power blinked on a couple of times, so Avery clapped and cheered. Then it was off for a long time, so I pulled out the candles. Avery had Spaghetti-Os by candlelight. I, on the other hand, had peanut butter crackers since that was all I could see to find in the kitchen that didn't require heating. Oh well.
We moved our party to the car in the garage so we could listen to the radio. (No, we don't have a battery-powered radio within easy reach in our house.) Avery enjoyed "driving," beeping the horn, flipping the turn signal, turning on the hazard lights and climbing from front to back seat. Once we were sure the storm had passed, we returned to the comfort of our living room and played puzzles and read books by candlelight.
I called NES to report our outage on their automated phone system. The final prompt tells you to press "1" if you want to be called and informed when your power is restored. Hmmm, let me think about that. No, thanks. I think I'll figure that out when EVERY LIGHT IN MY HOUSE COMES ON AT THE SAME TIME. Give me a break!
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6 comments:
We were in our basement b/c we heard the tornado sirens going off. That is a good trick with the 'God is taking pictures' we may have to try it at our house.
And how dumb can people get? I'm with you, I think you'd realize you had power when everything worked again:)
Yeah, that question at the end of the NES report call seems ridiculous but from what I understand, they do that for people who have sought shelter elsewhere while they are without electricity. If you need electricity to operate medical equipment or if you work from home, etc, and your power is going to be out for an extended period of time, you must temporarily relocate. So, a phone call from NES to let you know when your power is back on would be helpful. But I always get a chuckle out of that blurb at the end, too, since I'm not likely going anywhere and all the lights coming on is a good indication that the we got power back!
We took shelter in our basement for a few minutes. I didn't think about getting into the car, I'll either have to remember that or get a weather radio. ;) I ended up calling David from my cell phone. He was in Georgia but had a laptop so that he could tell me what was going on!
it was good to see you on sunday. avery is too cute and you look great!
Hayley
Such a good story! And I love the idea about the lightning. Cute! I'm glad you had a fun evening together. =)
Not fun...but special memories! ;)
Hey! How's Belly Baby? Can't wait to see you!
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