Sunday night, central Oklahoma got hit with a major ice storm. By Monday, several areas of town began losing power. I don’t understand why, but there’s a line between my house and my next door neighbor’s — my power stays on when his goes out, and vice versa. He was without power all day Monday, and so Monday evening we ran an extension cord from my workshop to his house to get heat for his family. That worked until Tuesday around 1 p.m., when I lost power as well. I can’t say there weren’t signs. Monday morning, our power went off so often that I quit counting after a dozen flickers. Later that day, all of our cable services (television and internet) died. Tuesday morning brought more power flashes until it finally went out for good. OG&E says we’re not alone; the last time I checked they were reporting roughly a quarter of a million people without power.
We spent most of Tuesday hanging around on the couch, next to the fireplace. Our fireplace is gas and puts off as much heat as a couple of candles, but between that and a hoodie, we remained comfortable. Morgan slept in our bed while Susan and I slept on the couch. At one point I woke up because I was sweating so much. It’s all about layers, people!
My dad is also without power but has a generator, and my mom’s power was out but (last I heard) is back on. Susan’s mom’s power went off in the middle of the night, so Susan left sometime around 5 a.m. to help Liz and Howard relocate over to Susan’s sister’s house.
No power means no CPAP, which means I slept about four hours last night, and woke up feeling more tired than I felt when I went to bed. I’m sure I’ll take plenty of naps throughout the day.
I have two laptops here at the house. One of them died yesterday; this one has 10% battery left, and won’t last much longer. I charged my old GameBoy and my Android tablet before the power died, along with my battery charger, so I’m good with those for a bit. Susan defrosted her car yesterday before the second wave of ice hit, which was smart — all of our other vehicles are coated in an inch or more of ice on the outside. I can’t even get the door to my car open.
So, we’re okay — a little chilly, but not cold. We’ve got places we can go if the outage stretches on. Until then we’ll be hanging out on the couch, waiting for the magical power to return.
Oh, and napping. Lots and lots of napping.
PG&E (our utility company, and the worst in the nation) regularly turns off power to rural customers. We are starting to adapt. A home generator is a must now. I feel your pain, we pay the highest rates in the nation for third world level service, and this seems to be a more common thing Nationwide. Is a CPAP user having a uber standby battery is a must. We just acquired one that will run a CPAP for three nights and provides USB ports for charging phones. I guess what I’m telling you is get used to it it’s going to happen more and more, time to remember the American tradition of self-reliance and just give up on large companies and government regulated monopolies like power companies.