Thank you Hurricane Sandy : Things I found in our house after the power was out for almost 13 days
After 13 days without lights, electricity, heat and hot water, your house becomes a pigsty of mystery. When the lights finally flicker to life, you get to see your wonderous cluster fuck of a living situation bathed in glorious incandescence.
In our house, clumps of dried leaves had rubbed themselves with great vigor into every square inch of carpeting. Understandable. When you cook pots of coffee, 10 pounds of freezer waffles and a 50-pack of half de-thawed mini party weenies on the grill, that's a thousand trips in and out the backdoor. I didn't even notice our indoor nature fest due to the pitch-black-darkness problem and the working-during-daylight problem. But even if I had noticed, it wasn't like anything was going to happen. Vacuums do not run on D-batteries.
We found a fleece jihad in the bedroom. Rejected items littered the perimeter-- goggles, a broken pole strap, half a trail map and a pile of ravaged rubber maid tubs labeled "Skiing." On any given night, you'd find Tom and I in bed with our iPads wearing jackets, hats, gloves, scarves and four hundred weight polypropylene. That was no pea in my mattress, just ninety tubes of chapstick I apparently hoard in my ski pant pockets.
On the plus side, the frigid indoor temperatures killed a swarm of fruitflies slumming around our kitchen. And Tom justified the purchase of a $40 light saber. Not only would it double as a flashlight, but also enabled him to intone "Luke I am your father" at various and odd intervals. It sounds fucking eerie when it's as quiet as the goddamn moon in your zipcode.
I developed a newfound appreciation for headlamps. Much easier than wandering through the house with a flashlight clutched in my mittens or following around slowbi wan kenobi swinging his light saber and knocking over furniture.
In comparison to others, we were lucky, really. Nonetheless, the cat was not at all pleased.
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| Hurricane Sandy: Accuweather Power Outage from Space |
We found a fleece jihad in the bedroom. Rejected items littered the perimeter-- goggles, a broken pole strap, half a trail map and a pile of ravaged rubber maid tubs labeled "Skiing." On any given night, you'd find Tom and I in bed with our iPads wearing jackets, hats, gloves, scarves and four hundred weight polypropylene. That was no pea in my mattress, just ninety tubes of chapstick I apparently hoard in my ski pant pockets.
On the plus side, the frigid indoor temperatures killed a swarm of fruitflies slumming around our kitchen. And Tom justified the purchase of a $40 light saber. Not only would it double as a flashlight, but also enabled him to intone "Luke I am your father" at various and odd intervals. It sounds fucking eerie when it's as quiet as the goddamn moon in your zipcode.
I developed a newfound appreciation for headlamps. Much easier than wandering through the house with a flashlight clutched in my mittens or following around slowbi wan kenobi swinging his light saber and knocking over furniture.
In comparison to others, we were lucky, really. Nonetheless, the cat was not at all pleased.
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