Scribbles by ME

The Ice Storm from Hell Part 2

We woke up at 8:10 the next morning and Rick began preparing breakfast.  I turned on the television and thought maybe I would have breakfast in bed.  Then, the electricity went off and was to stay off for us for the next seven days.  Five of these days the temperatures hovered between twenty-five and thirty-three degrees during the day, dropping in the teens at night.

The sleeting had stopped by nine o'clock Tuesday morning, but then it started raining heavily and rained for hours.  With the temperatures so low, it all froze eventually.

I got myself ready for the day by donning two sets of long underwear, a heavy sweat shirt and pants, along with a fleece coat.  On my feet I wore one pair of my socks and a pair of Rick's heavy duty ones on top.  Then, I donned some heavy fleece bedroom slippers.  The most outstanding and important items I wore constantly were a red ski hat, with a striped ski band around my ears and a crocheted scarf wrapped numerous times around my neck.  I envisioned myself as a rambling teddy bear when I bothered to leave my six layers of blankets and heave myself off the couch. 

We started getting the house ready for a long drawn out ice siege.  We closed off the back two bedrooms and bath.  We got the kerosene heater going in the living room and it took the chill off nicely.  The temperature stayed between sixty-five and sixty-nine degrees as  long as the heater was on.  We have a freezer in a third bedroom full to the brim with a half beef we had purchased a few weeks earlier and Rick worried himself sick about it.  Most of the refrigerator items we put in the back bathroom or outside.  We hoped we would get electricity back in a few days--like two--and the beef would stay frozen.

Rick's cell phone had no signal and mine had a dead battery.  Therefore, we could not communicate with anyone.  After a few days we were to learn there was no signal anyway for anyone with the carrier we use.  Wonder where all those people are that are supposed to be following me around?  Guess they froze to death last night in our yard.

Rick's old radio from the early sixties kept us up to date with what was going on all around us…..nothing.  There were only a few radio stations on and because they were being powered by generators, their signals were pretty weak.

We learned that those north of us were in worse condition than we.  The weather stations had led us to believe that the storm might miss Missouri while slapping us into Ice Hell.  We began to get very anxious when we heard that most people could be without electricity for as much as thirty days.  We were fortunate because we had water.  Many people had no water.  We kept our water slowly drip, drip, dripping each night.

Rick decided to put a pan of water on top of the kerosene heater to put some moisture in the air when we realized he could cook on it.  So, I was well fed by my husband for the days we were in exile.  While dishwashing in and of itself was not much fun, performing the task with ice cold water is practically impossible.  So, it was heat water, wash a couple of plates.  Heat water, wash a couple of pans, and so on.

We read, slept, and played cards most of the day.  Being computer freaks and not able to get on-line left us bereft and out of touch with Computer-land.  I am taking two on-line courses and I was getting unhinged about getting my assignments in on time.  My type A personality doesn't take holidays.

On Tuesday night we had snow and seventeen degrees out.  Who knows what the wind chill was? 

The dark of night made it bedtime.  Rick insisted on sleeping in the living room where the heater kept the cold bearable.  My son had warned me about the fumes and I was downright paranoid.  I, therefore, went back to the bedroom to sleep where the temperature was around maybe thirty degrees.  Once in the bed and under the comforter, I made my own little cocoon and was quite cozy.

Sometime during the night I was awakened by a cracking, booming, hissing sound.  The fact that I was awakened is just totally unheard of as nothing ever wakes me up.  But, this night something did.  I jumped out of bed and ran to the front where I thought maybe the kerosene heater had exploded.  Rick was sleeping peacefully.  I woke him up to assure myself he was not dead.  He's the light sleeper in the family, but he had heard nothing.  Tomorrow, I would discover the answer to my mystery.

Going to the back door before I returned to my bed nest, I reflexively turned on the light switch to look at the weather.  It was pitch black, of course, because we had no electricity.  I wish I knew how many times during these Dark Ages I tried turning on lights!

Some type of precipitation was happening which I assumed was snow, so shrugging hopelessly, I returned to ensconce myself in my soft sheltered little cocoon. 

Day 2 was over.