As we watched snow pour from the sky all day yesterday I kept finding myself bargaining with the powers that be, “I promise to not complain and to make good use of my time as long as the power doesn’t go out”. I can handle it, but Mikey starts to come undone when the power goes out.

So at about 10:30 last night I had just settled into a Sean Penn movie (I picked up the marathon where I left off during the last snow-in) and a huge mug of coke… and the power went out. Mikey groaned. Cursed. We rounded up candles and flashlights. Reported the outage to the power company, whose recording told us that we were one of 70,000 customers without service. We bundled into bed with books and and extra blankets and knitting and paper for writing letters. It was cozy.

This morning there were about two feet of snow – up above my knees, plus whatever I’d packed down and was standing on. More than Paisley could even manage, she who is the queen of deer-hopping around in the snow. I dug a path from the front porch to the woodpile and she ran back and forth in that, not even trying to go anywhere else. All of us hung out in the livingroom around the woodstove all day. Reading, knitting, playing, banjoing, calling family and friends to see who was buried in how much snow. We made up the sofabed so we could sleep in the only warm room of the house tonight, hung our camping lantern from the rafter above, and burrowed in with books and projects and toys. I’m almost done with Hazel’s scarf. She and Mikey were reading her 75th book of the day (or something like that) and practicing saying the word “butt”. Paisley was mowing down on some abandoned graham crackers in a bowl on the floor.

And then the electricity came back on and poof. We scattered.

When it came on the TV was still on, so Hazel peered at it and then gave us a pleading look and we put on a 70s episode of Sesame Street for her to watch so we could each have some computer time. Mikey ran to check his email. I ran to check Etsy.

Now, I love electricity, and I’m all for spending the night with the heat pump running instead of a fire that will go out and leave us cold in the morning, but… it makes for a lot of things that get in the way of being a family. We were going to play Blokus! And Mikey was going to help me work on photo-sorting! And other things like that that we never actually do when our computers and sewing machines and everything else are functional.

That said, I have been dying to take a hot bath all day because I think I broke my toe (maybe? maybe not – it’s definitely ugly and sore), so I think I will go take one – just because now I can – even though it’s 10:30 at night. I love electricity.

Photos later. They are having problems uploading.

Listening: I have that old commercial jingle in my head…
(I am) Reading: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox – GOOO-OOOOD
(Hazel is) Reading: more like: what is Hazel NOT reading today
Working on: blue & gold blanket; tiny Hazel scarf