It started Thursday mid-day & was pretty well over by Saturday afternoon, but the amount of snow we had & resulting power outages has us still digging out & cleaning up. The electricity vanished Thursday night. We have a gas powered generator which keeps the well pump going, the telly etc. Then we found the 250 gal. propane tank that we depend on for the cooker, the heater & water heater was almost empty. We lost telephone service Friday. The generator packed in later that day, so the electric heater we'd been depending on the keep the deep chill off the house was gone. HOWEVER-Saturday was brilliantly sunny which cheered me up immensely (though Michael remained grumpy), & kept me sweating as I shoveled small mountains of snow. Saturday also brought a friend of Michaels' who fixed the generator. Yesterday was blindingly sunny as well & I kept shoveling. I enjoyed it. It felt good after days of cooped- upness & satisfying to uncover the vehicles & push back the walls of snow. I'd forgotten how claustrophobic snow can be. Last evening just at dusk the propane truck appeared & filled the tank. Oh, the sheer luxury, the complete relaxation of heat! When the electric came on later in the night it was somewhat anti-climactic. The telephone started to ring as well. I'd never missed it.
My great grandmothers got out of bed every morning to make fires in cook -stoves, draw water, heat that water to make meals for large families and work hard to maintain a modicum of cleanliness. They worried about what unseasonable weather would do to crops and how to keep livestock alive. They wasted nothing; not water, not food, neither scraps of fabric nor bits of money. Makes me feel both privileged & foolish to feel so inconvenienced.
