March: Pretty, pretty, pretty! Our spring flowers, magnolia tree and fruit trees bloomed at the same time. Oh how I’ve bragged about our early, lovely spring to my California cousin, Wayne, my friend John who is wintering in Tucson, and the Vrabels who are having a chilly winter in Florida!
Sunday, April 3: “Warm face, warm hands, warm feet! Oh wouldn’t it be loverly?” — “My Fair Lady”
It’s 28 degrees. Fifty-mile-an-hour wind knocked out our power yesterday afternoon. According to IPL’s automated service number 30,000 customers are affected.
Power was estimated to be restored by noon today. We shouldn’t have believed it as we’d been through this process before. Instead of going to a hotel, we sat all evening like two frozen turnips. No heat! No television! No coffee! No Kindle! No cooking on our glass top range or in the microwave! We had a yummy dinner last night of peanut butter sandwiches.
My mood is sour and sullen today when I crawl out from under two blankets and an Afghan. I quickly pull my winter robe over my pajamas, a turtleneck and a hoodie zipped to my chin with its hood covering my head that I wore to bed. Even Pusscatkin is cold and has wormed her way under the blankets.
I flip the bathroom light switch. Nada! I get our battery-powered camp light. A brief as possible sojourn in the frigid bathroom reminds me of Anne la Bastille’s life as a woodswoman in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York where her bottom froze to the toilet seat. This morning is one more proof that I have absolutely no desire to live in the wilderness as she did or as a pioneer woman like my ancestors.
I look out the windows and see that the jaunty daffodils are bent to the ground. A major limb of a Bradford pear has broken and will have to be amputated, The petals of the lovely magnolia’s blossoms litter the ground, and the flowers that remain on the tree have been burned an ugly brown by frost.
I exchange my pajama pants for jeans, put on a heavy jacket and go outside to heat a pan of water on the gas grill to make coffee that quickly becomes tepid. Dinner this evening will be hot dogs and Grillin’ Beans cooked on the grill.
Later, Bill raises the garage door manually. We don’t look good enough to go into a restaurant, but go through the drive-through at McDonalds. The sun is heating our car, so we park in our driveway and munch our sandwiches. Oh the bliss of simple things! We wrap our cold fingers around steaming cups of coffee. Surely coffee must have been the nectar of the gods
The service message predicts that power will be restored by midnight tonight. Bill said, “Do you really think they’ll fix that transformer back in the woods in the dark?” It’s supposed to be warmer tonight so we decide to tough it out one more night. After all, we used to camp at Bryce Canyon where it often got down into the twenties at night.
Monday: Eric, the Knightstown Banner publisher whose deadline is today, will have to recycle an old column. The call center says, “Repairs are to be finished by late afternoon.” We don’t trust it. Another night in the twenties is predicted. Two darling young women allow us to check in early at the Fairfield Inn by Marriott on East 21st, about five minutes from our house. We highly recommend it. The two-area suite and its bathroom are pristine. Both of us are chilled to the bone. Oh the bliss of a scalding shower! Tuesday: The power is back on. Our house is a mess. One doesn’t feel like housework when one’s freezing. Contents of the fridge are in coolers. Thank goodness the stuff in the chest freezer hasn’t thawed.
Wednesday: I’m still having chills. Uh-oh. Back to the ER. C Diff again. Sigh . . . wclarke@comcast.net