It all started one crazy morning in late October. I had been up since 5AM and was waiting in line with other like-minded, devoted (read: crazy) people for tickets to Phish's four-night New Years run at Madison Square Garden. After a complete shut out (damn you Ticketmaster) for NYE, which is really all we cared about, and "scoring" 6 tickets for every other night, I left the mall feeling haggard from lack of sleep and tons of ticket related anxiety. All I could think about was how good it was going to feel to make a bag of popcorn and watch Netflix. Mother nature had other plans for me.
It was snowing when I walked outside--this wet, blustery, sideways snow that never means good things to come. I got home within 20 minutes and within 20 minutes of that our power was out. I was mildly inconvenienced; this would obviously throw a wrench into the works of my plans to be a vegetable in the body-eating recliner in the basement. I kept waiting for it to come back on. It didn't.
(Here are some pictures of the FIRST HOUR of this storm.. the first hour...)
 |
| look how sideways this snow is! ah! |
After two hours or so, I ended up going outside and fighting the accumulation on the driveway as best I could so that mom could actually pull the car in when she arrived home. I started at one end and by the time I got to the other end the side I started with was covered again. Futile.
That night ended up being sort of fun. Jarod was home with his girlfriend and we had this fab evening sitting by a roaring fire J made and vacillating between talking, not talking, listening to music, sitting in silence... It was peaceful and great. (Check it out):
 |
| yep, those are marshmallows.. duh, we had an open flame.. |
The next morning was fun, too. Mom cooked a feast on the grill and we all ate together. The following night was also pretty adventuresome. After that first 24 hours, though...things just got rough.
 |
| morning s'mores..obviously. |
 |
| had to brew coffee on the grill.. at least it brought me back to my roots |
The first 3 nights were cold. I mean freezing. I was sleeping in every item on the clothing food chain, all the way up to my head, and still waking up 4-5 times in the middle of the night having to jump around because I was so cold. I think on the 4th morning I actually woke up with little frozen tears in my eyes from having sobbed from sheer misery through the night. Haha...no... but really... it was COLD! Then mom pulled some magical miracle and did some heat override thing (??) and suddenly we had heat. That basically ensured that I could sustain this power outage for what ended up being only 3 more days. Then I melted down again. (This brought me to day 6... Little did I know I was only at the half-way point here.)
Trust me, as I'm writing this, I fully acknowledge the spoiled bratty-ness of it all, the first-worldliness of the whole disaster. But honestly, what do I have in my own experience to compare it to? I will say I AM grateful for a few things relating to this ridiculous nor'easter:
(1) although the damage caused by dozens of trees and gigantic limbs that fell was considerable, nothing actually fell on or through our roof (just our poor shed)...
(2) my dad was at Avon Health Center (with fully functional generators!!) recuperating in the care of capable individuals and didn't have to be home for this nightmare... also, selfishly (yes, it's my blog, I can admit here I acted in my own interests!), I got to charge all my devices when I would visit (fab perk of visiting but obviously not the reason for my visits.... ok... maybe the reason that my visits were so long)
(3) my grandfather finally conceded and came over to spend the night with us, which turned into this fantastic evening of delicious (grill-cooked) food *check out those pics down there!* and like 5 games of Rummikub (I love my grandpa, he might be the greatest grandfather in history... I challenge anyone to debate this with me)
 |
| you better believe I cooked muscles on the grill.. i also seared some killer scallops... i don't play! |
(4) we saved a lot of money on lights and cable
(5) I went 11 days without getting sucked into any garbage television marathons like the Real Housewives of [any US city] or anything on TLC ...someone keeps DVRing these shows... hmm...
(6) I had occasion to use my headlamp for the second time in one calendar year, which is more than I anticipated when I initially bought it
(7) I made a couple of really awesome new friends because I was so under-stimulated and bored with myself after day 9 that I forced myself to branch out and was rewarded accordingly! (hooray for Julia and Curt)
(8) I think I lost a pound or two because I was frankly too damn lazy to come up with creative things to do with the random food we had left after the first 3 days, not to mention I grew weary of grilling...
Being uncomfortable is interesting. Comfort is this weird, beastly thing that tricks us into doing things that aren't always good for us just because those things sometimes make us happy, or elicit some response that we recognize or, I dunno, feed this hungry troll in our brain that lives on hugs, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Starbucks, and positive reinforcement. Obviously I could manage to live a normal life despite the absence of hugs, over-priced soy lattes and compliments (Ben & Jerry's I'm not so sure about...), but these things make me feel comfortable. Sort of how flipping a switch when you walk into windowless bathroom and knowing that a light will go on to save you from accidentally peeing in the tub is comforting, I depend on these things to get me through my days without friction. But friction is so crucial to growth, really. Well, scientifically speaking, who knows if friction=growth... I really doubt that equation exists anywhere in science. Physics never thrilled me...
You know what I mean though. How are we ever going to break boundaries and cross thresholds if we just chill comfortably, cuddling with someone who unconditionally adores us as we down pint after pint of Cherry Garcia?? We won't! Anyway, I learned a lot about myself during this little New England disaster (and I mean in addition to learning that I kill on the grill and that I prefer reading like a spelunker than with an actual reading lamp).
Ultimately, the power returned in a manner that was sufficiently equal in extreme coolness to the level of hellish uncoolness of the prior 11 days. In response to a pleading, desperate text about my boredom, the latter of my aforementioned new friends (who I can't name again because I have a nagging feeling he will demand royalties due to the insanely popular nature of this blog) said: "It will come back on soon, trust me... I am a wizard." I was outside grilling my dinner at the time. Two seconds later, all the ambient deck lighting goes on. I died a little. Some people see stars, I saw exclamation points. My wizard friend is better than your wizard friend. Win!
So I'll just leave you with talk of wizards, these vague statements about discomfort leading to growth that I won't elaborate on because I'm tired and getting lazy, and also with this much-more-fascinating-than-my-writing, hypnotic video of my evening entertainment for most of this black-out experience... Thanks for reading! xx
No comments:
Post a Comment