The Green Ladies / Our New Mechanic

Here is a photo of green lady's slipper orchids (Cypripedium acaule) in the Scotia Barrens. I took my bike up in the morning, and walked all the way up to the third pond, just to get away from it all. By next week, these blooms will be PINK. They grow EVERYWHERE in the Barrens this time of year.

The extra photo is a shot of our new mechanic, working under our car. Yes, we fired our old mechanic. LGK has been working double shifts for weeks now, and during the power outage, he put in TRIPLE shifts. Boy, is he exhausted from it all!

And now . . . back to our story of the great big power outage.

When we left off, our intrepid selves were smack dab in the middle of a power outage. The storm that rolled through on Tuesday night took our electricity out around 6:45 p.m. I've already told you about Wednesday, and the dentist visit. Now, let's see what Thursday has in store, shall we?

But first, let me recap a bit. I live in central Pennsylvania. It is NOT tornado alley. Yet we've been having horrible storms at scarily regular intervals of late. We've had at least THREE big blows this spring, one of which took down our huge red oak tree (but that one left the power ON, go figure).

Just as this latest storm hit on Tuesday night, the winds howled around our house (later, it was shared that in some places wind speed during this derecho reached 90 mph), and I watched the trees bend. Outside, in our woods, I could hear the gut-wrenching sound of trees falling. But none fell on our house, or shed, or outside car.

I'd like to tell you that I handled it all quite well, like a storm trooper. But I did not. No, I am sad to tell you I did not. My heart started pounding, I began hyperventilating, and I had an attack of what I can only sort of describe as PTSD. I walked, shakily, to the center of our house, and sat at the top of the front steps, with my head in my hands, and just listened to my heart pound. "I'm not sure I can live here anymore," I said. But what can one do? Somehow, one goes on.

The timing of it all was unfair, too. We had just returned from the woods, where we KNEW we would not have power, or many of the comforts of home. When we got home, I was ready to settle in, enjoy cold drinks and hot food, and relax. We were thwarted on all counts.

I had TONS of fun photos - of our backpacking trip, and my awesome, tulip-filled visit to the Arboretum on Tuesday - and had no way to even look at them much (the power level on my main computer already being rather low), let alone post them anywhere. Yes, I love taking pictures. And I have plenty of charged camera batteries - maybe a dozen of them - so yes, I could keep on TAKING pictures, even when the power is out. But my enjoyment is increased by sharing them. Oops, thwarted again!

With no access to the Internet, I lost my connections to all of my friends and family. Grex and gripe and groan about social media all you want, but when it's not available, I can assure you that you'll MISS IT. 

Somehow, somewhere along the age of Covid (March 2020), and then my retirement (December 2020), Facebook became my main socializing tool. I use it every day to post photos and stories and songs, and to share funny and encouraging and beautiful things, and to keep up with my tribe. And then of course, there's Blip, where all of my stories - and my best photos - live!

I also use Facebook to keep in touch with family: my brother Robin and my little sister Julie, and my cousins. I do text chats with my brother and sister almost every day. Thursday morning, my husband asked, Did they even know we were off-line? I said: How would I tell them? With no Internet, I could not get access to Facebook chat.

He pointed to our ancient land-line phone, with hardly any functionality: maybe I could CALL my little sister and tell her? And so I did. She was surprised to hear from me, and giggled a lot - mostly at every bad word I said; and I said a LOT of them! "The next time I tell you I'm buying a house in a town with a name like STORMStown," I said - and I fairly SPAT out the word in disgust - "Somebody, just SHOOT ME!!!"

But by the time I was off the phone, and we'd commiserated a little, I felt better; I really did! I also asked her to put a notice on my Facebook page letting everyone know I was not gone by choice, but by disaster; and that I'd be back when the power went back on. (I expected such a posting to be a source of amazement and concern among my friends, but it's humbling to admit the sad truth: nobody had even noticed I was missing.)

But let's focus once again on the pragmatics of things. Wednesday, we'd bought ice and sandwich fixings, and good potato chips at the store. Once my husband had put everything important from the fridge and freezer into coolers, I think we both felt a little bit better about things. 

As we peered into the freezer, I said, "SAVE THE FETTUCCINE!!!" and "Don't forget the cake!" My husband asked me, later, did I think I could eat my fettuccine cold? I thought about it. I was not sure I could. Also of note: there was no way to heat water up, even to wash dishes! So our dishes sat in the sink from Tuesday night, onward; dishes in the sink is a personal pet peeve. So you can only guess how I felt about this turn of events!

Our water and septic system, fortunately, both are very old-fashioned, and work with gravity; when the power goes out, we still have running water and we can still flush the toilets. But then my husband said a thing that helped me understand that our situation could get way, way worse. "Remember the water tower on Tow Hill?" he asked. Well, yes, I did. "When the power goes out, once the water in the water tower is all used up, they can't refill it," my husband said, ominously.

So just in case, we filled up a number of containers around the house with fresh, clean water, and left them sitting in key strategic places, including near the toilets, in case we should eventually need water for flushing. (Yes, things do get way down to the basics when the power goes out!) Best to be prepared.

Now, what would YOU do if you had no access to the television or Internet for several days in a row? Let me tell you what *I* did. I glued shoes. I mended socks and underwear. I wrote out checks to charities I support. I planted three kinds of sunflowers in the yard. And I did yard work, and I played pick-up sticks, which you will do a LOT if you own a property with trees on it.

And fortunately or unfortunately, every spring there is a task I must do. I pull garlic mustard from our yard, hoping eventually it will go away entirely. The roots come up easier after a good rain, so Wednesday and Thursday, I spent a fair amount of time whaling on the garlic mustard, giving it all I'd got. It's progress I probably would not have made without the circumstances we had.

I also recommend that during a crisis, you purchase yourself some really crunchy food, and eat it loudly, crunching it HARD. I had the good sense to pick up some really robust, crunchy kettle potato chips, and every night, I crunched the hell out of those suckers. Good. I felt better. Note that I'm not saying that your dentist will approve; this is mental health advice, not dental advice! :-)

Oh, and let me throw in this little tidbit. On our way home from the dentist on Wednesday afternoon, we'd finally heard an update on our power outage. The announcer said there were still 29,000 businesses and homes without power in Centre County, where we live.

He said they were concentrating on getting the important stuff back on; people in rural areas (such as ourselves) might have to wait for DAYS AND DAYS to get power back. Oy vey. That was discouraging. My husband and I just looked at each other. It was beginning to sound like it would take a miracle to get the power back on!

Later on that afternoon, I heard my husband on the front porch. He'd dug around in the garage until he came up with our camp stove, which had not been used in many years. "Come out here," he said. I did. And discovered that he was heating up my Olive Garden leftover fettuccine on the front porch! Oh boy, did he get Good Husband Points for THAT maneuver! :-) It was my first hot meal in several days, and it was WONDERFUL.

In the process of digging around looking for the camp stove, he'd also come across our grill, which we use mainly in summertime. We had food from the freezer defrosting, and the big plan was that the following day, he'd make us cheeseburgers and pizza on the grill. That all sounded good to me!

We knew that more storms were coming, potentially more bad ones. But without Internet, and our weather radar, we could not see or tell when or where they would be, or how long it would last, or when it would be clear. It is very frustrating to be without Internet! So when the evening storms rolled in, it was a big guessing game. 

The winds came again. "What? Is this going to be EVERY DAY NOW?" my husband asked, chagrined. But guess what: when the storm came, there was one thing we did not worry about: our power going off. Because it was ALREADY OFF!!!! HA HA HA HA HA!!!

On Tuesday night, we'd amused ourselves by partying on the front porch with the cat. On Wednesday night, we watched two Perry Mason episodes on my old computer. On Thursday night, we enjoyed watching a tremendously beautiful lightning storm, ate cake, and played games: Trouble, and Uno, and then poker. I got soundly beaten at Trouble and Uno; however, I cleaned up with an accidental straight at poker.

We were sitting in the living room playing games, around 10:10 p.m. when there was a sound, a thump, maybe, and then a click, and then the fire alarm (wired into our electric system) shrieked a few times and then . . .  the lights went ON. Hooray! We were back in business! OUR POWER WAS BACK ON!!! My husband said, "Couldn't I have just ONE MORE DAY? I was just starting to get into myself!"

This is a paraphrase of a scene from the film Stir Crazy, which you may watch here; when Gene Wilder is put in solitary confinement, and then they come back to get him after five days. Actually, that was pretty good, and funny, and a perfectly used film reference, given the situation; yes, my guy gets extra Good Husband Points for that, too. :-)

So we have a happy ending. The power went back on. We reset all the clocks. My husband put the food back in the fridge and freezer; I'm not sure we lost a single thing! Maybe just a little bit of milk. And then we stayed up till past midnight, celebrating that we had back all of the things we so easily took for granted. The End.

Here are some songs for these photos. For the green lady's slipper orchids, which bloom like crazy in the Scotia Barrens, and will turn pink in a week or so, I've got Olivia Newton-John, with Greensleeves. And for our new mechanic whom you may see in the extras, I just had to use something from Mike + the Mechanics; here they are with All I Need Is a Miracle. And if YOU are in need of a miracle, we hope you get one, too!