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8:22 a.m. - 2013-12-28
ICE STORM GEMINI PART TWO
On the drive to work I noticed that a majority of the channels on my car radio had an ad from the power company about the danger of touching downed electrical wires. Not a good prognosis, but kudos to them for getting it on the air so fast. The city where I work had apparently missed the worst of the storm; none of the trees had the ice covering that was the rule at my home.

Work was uneventful, though the common conversation thread was Who's Got Power, not one I enjoyed taking part in.

On the drive home after dark I couldn't help being annoyed at the Christmas lights than I had been admiring only a few days earlier. However beautiful, they seemed like an extravagance to someone who couldn't even have a light in the bathroom. My mood got worse when I noticed that the town just south of mine was dark as a World War II blackout. And when I got to the first traffic light in my city, there was none. Emergency workers had set up signs changing it to a four-way stop. No traffic lights, street lights, business signs: no light of any kind.

And Aunt Laureen's street was just as dark as the rest. I pulled into her driveway, turned off the ignition, sighed and got my overnight bag out of the trunk.

Aunt Laureen let me in. She was wearing sweat pants, big furry slippers, a heavy sweater over a turtleneck, a knit cap, and Bob Cratchit fingerless gloves. She had lost power a few hours after I had, but hadn't wanted to worry me at work.

Older people never want to "worry you" or "make a fuss." They must get a new set of Ten Commandments when they qualify for Social Security. She was right, though: there was nothing I could have done. She had managed to reach the power company after waiting On Hold forever, and was told that it would be four or five days before power was restored. They usually estimate longer than necessary in order to minimize second phone calls. "Lowering expectations" was the phrase used by our Customer Service guest speaker a few years ago. If you think something will take 20 minutes, tell them half an hour.

Aunt Laureen had a church worth of candles burning on the mantel. She hasn't used her fireplace for years and was afraid it would not be safe to try.

I changed into my fleece, accepted a hooded sweatshirt from Aunt Laureen, and sat down on the couch. It was already getting cold in her house, though certainly not unbearable yet. Since her CPAP wouldn't work without electricity, she planned to sleep sitting up (less sleep apnea that way?) on the sofa. I didn't want to take her bed, so I told her I'd sleep at the other end of the same sofa.

After we argued about that for a while, she brought out a battery-powered tape player, and a boxed set of old radio plays. We spent an hour or so listening to Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce re-create their Holmes and Watson roles on what had apparently been a popular radio series around the time of the second World War.

Then we turned off the tape player, extinguished the candles, made sure we each had a flashlight within easy reach, and snuggled down on the couch. We each had our own nest, consisting of several pillows and multiple blankets. Since I was working second shift, the lack of an alarm clock didn't bother me, though I made a mental note to include a windup one in my overnight bag after this. I fell asleep quickly, awakened once in complete disorientation, only remembering where I was when I saw my aunt's knit cap jutting our of a pile of blankets and quilts.

 

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