Having spending a mere 24 hours without electricity after Hurricane Irene blew through town, I have a newfound appreciation for all things AC/DC. (We were at my parents’ house in suburban NJ, but hightailed it back to our apartment in NYC as soon as the storm passed.)
As knuckle-headed as it sounds, I don’t think I was really aware of how many things require electricity until it all shuts down. With that experience behind me, here’s some of the things I couldn’t do without power—some with surprising benefits, but most of them just plain frustrating:
1. No Joe. Because our stove uses an electric-starter, even boiling water and doing a simple manual drip coffee was out. Ditto for even the simplest but most comforting meals: toast, soup, eggs. Helloooo PB&J!
2. No mindless munching: Since we tried to keep opening and closing of the ‘fridge to a minimum in an attempt to keep what was in there from spoiling, I found myself unable to do that thing where you open the door and contemplate the contents, until something strikes you. This cut down on my snacking by quite a bit, so I guess that’s a good thing.
3. No red lights: Yes, I will admit that when we went out for a drive and approached our first darkened intersection I was momentarily confused. After all, the lights being out seems sort of personal, whereas no power for something as big and community-based as the traffic signal–how can the two be related? OBVIOUSLY, they are, but in my post-Hurricane brain, it took an extra moment to make the soggy connection. There was surprisingly little anarchy, though; most people simply took turns one by one.
4. No screen-time: I didn’t realize just how much time I spent toggling between my computer screen and the TV! Perhaps it was exacerbated by the fact that before the power went out we were all rather glued to the tube and the ‘net, seeking information (or at least some funny weatherman-on-the-scene stunts.)
5. No audible talking while baby is napping: We normally flip on a white-noise machine for my toddler’s nap, drowning out the sounds of all the ever-so-fun stuff happening while she’s sequestered in her crib. With no power, the whoooossshhhhh noise was noticeably absent—something we ALL noticed. So it was shhh for us while she napped!
6. No Nook: Well, let me amend that. I could read a little on my Nook, but since it started the day with barely half a battery left, I didn’t want to blaze through what little juice remained. Of course, on the plus side this was the perfect excuse to crack open some old favorites.
7. No news! When you’re suddenly without TV or radio or Internet, you find yourself feeling creepily adrift. At least I did. I craved the sounds and images of what was going on near and far, especially after having been so tuned in for the three prior days. Thank heavens for my dad’s Eton hand-crank radio. There’s nothing like some good old fashioned elbow grease to get you the news, traffic, and weather.
8. No opening the garage door–particularly if you’re only 5 feet 1. Without power and without enough verticality, I wasn’t tall enough to manually pull the garage door down. Up I could do. Down, notsomuch.
9. No late nights. After it gets dark, there’s really not that much to do. You can read, but one’s flashlight only holds out for so long. (And I didn’t have my headlamp on the premises.) Same thing for candles. Basically, it’s the perfect excuse to hit the sack really early. Only trouble is, I’m used to listening to public radio/talk radio as I drift off so laying there in the pin-drop quiet dark takes some getting used to!
I’m SURE that my little list is missing many of the other simple pleasures brought to you by the good people at the power company but those are the top nine mini-revelations this brief outage brought to my mind. Here’s hoping all of the people still without power get back on the grid soon!
What electrical device do you rely on the most? What do you find the most challenging about an outage??
