Baby...It's COLD Inside

It seems that hubby and I woke to the knowledge that the power was out...at the same moment. I believe that I said something about a strange smell...and he commented that the power was out, in response. I am not sure what either had to do with the other, but indeed, while temperatures outside dipped to -29, temperatures inside started sliding in the same direction.

At first I wasn't worried. We had an inverter and I thought we could plug the pellet stove in and get at least 4 hours of use. Not! The inverter's power joined the race to see which would hit 0 first...it...or the room temp. In less than 15 minutes it's charge was depleted.

My biggest concern was our bird...or rather, hubby's bird. (She hates me and takes every opportunity to remind me by lunging at me when I pass.). She is a tropical bird and would not last long in the cold. I covered her cage in flannel and filled the hot water bottle from the tap and then laid a thicker cover atop the first. It must have been effective as she was in fine form when we were finally able to take her cover off...and was able to resume her attempts to gouge me with her beak even as I came to her rescue.

In total, 3500 people were affected by the outage. We were without power, and heat, for almost 10 hours.

I am truly disappointed in myself. I prided myself in, and have preached preparedness. What went wrong?

First of all, we took for granted that our inverter would allow us a few hours of heat. We should have tested this theory. We were not able to make a warm beverage as we could not find our camp stove or propane canisters. These matters should have been attended to prior to the "emergency."

Rather than looking at this whole experience as a failure, I've decided to go easy on myself and recognize that there are valuable lessons to be learned. I know better now and next time I will do better.

The little girl in this watercolour sketch is my granddaughter, Alexia. I painted this from a photo I took two years ago. She didn't mind the cold then...and doesn't now...but this nana likes to be warm.

Hopefully we can keep it that way!