More specifically, *I* am alive, not that I was in any danger, but I almost went insane without power.

Yes, I know I sort of pooh-pooh'ed the storm in my earlier entry, but I forgot one teeny little detail when I said losing power is no big deal.

The cold.

Oh holy moly, was it cold! By last night, it was 45� inside the house. Nothing I did could warm me up enough. The night before last, I slept with only my face outside the covers, and I even layered on a few more quilts. Grace stayed warm with the use of a baby sleeping bag, one of those things that you put on your kid and zip up. My friend R had one big enough for Gracie that she lent us. I used them all the time when Grace was a infant, but then she got too big for them.

We lost power at 9pm on Thursday night. The wind was tearing through the trees; the noise was unbelievable. The house shuddered at a few points, and I was a little nervous. By the morning, it was clear and bright. The power came back on at 9am the following morning, and I thought I got off easy only losing power for 12 hours! And I slept through most of it!!

Fifteen minutes after the power came back on, the transformer on top of the pole just outside my house blew, and the power went out again. But the worst part is only the four houses attached to my pole (my neighbor to my right and the two houses across the street) lost power. The house directly behind me, about fifty feet from my house, had power. The entire street had power. Most of the neighborhood had power. The house up the street had its obnoxious Christmas display going. But we had no power. And our power problem wasn't really related to the storm. Our transformer could have blown at any time.

I kept calling the power company. Some of the folks I got a hold of were downright unhelpful, just saying, "I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't tell you anything," but one lady I got was very sweet. She made me laugh, she took some of my stress away, and she gave me a LOT of information. That was Friday night. Saturday morning when I still had no power, Kurt called the power company from the ship to see if it would help them to get out more quickly, as my problem was a very quick fix. I didn't want to be out of power for 80 hours again when it would take literally minutes for them to fix the problem.

When Kurt called, he got a very rude customer service rep. That surprised me because none of the reps I talked to had been rude. She told him, "You're not an electrician, so you don't know!" Then he says to her, "Actually I am an electrician." I don't think that sat well with her because she ended up hanging up on him.

Somehow Kurt got a hold of someone and asked a supervisor to call my cell phone. A very kind woman called me and asked me to describe in detail what was wrong with my transformer, and I gave her the best description I could. I also told her I had nowhere to go, which is true. I know very few people here, and by living on the wrong side of the water from Kurt's ship, I'm somewhat cut off from the Navy support system.

But my friend R very kindly opened her house to me on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. She even made me a hot breakfast on Saturday -- scrambled eggs with ham and cheese, and home fries!! Yum yum!!! Grace and I took a shower at her house as well, which went a long way towards making me feel human again. I spent much of Saturday keeping an eye on R's son and Grace as they played around R's house.

In the afternoon, I saw someone approaching my house, and I knew my neighbors had tried to get some of their friends to lend me their generator. The funny thing is, J had a previously scheduled trip for this weekend, as did my other neighbors, the Cs. So I was pretty much the only one left home without power out of the four houses attached to my transformer. So the Cs' friend came to check on me to see how I was doing, and she very graciously invited Grace and me to come stay with them until the power came back on. We went to her son's 6th birthday party at the local fire station (which is an AWESOME idea for a party, and I think I'll have to do that when Grace is a little bigger), and then out to dinner with the family to celebrate. We also slept there last night because it was just too cold to stay in our house. The temperature dove down into the 20s last night, so it wasn't safe for Grace and me to stay here.

When we got back to the house from the restaurant, my neighbor's 3-year-old son said to me, "You can sleep in my bed!!!" How sweet!

I didn't hardly know these people down the street, and they offered their home to Grace and me, and even my dog! It's so nice to know there are such sweet people in the world. Grace was so enthralled by the family because there are three boys (ages 7, 6, and 3), and they are VERY rambunctious. But she gave as good as she got, and I think she had a blast.

Before we went out to dinner, however, I saw a truck lumber up the street, and I went zooming out of the neighbor's house to see if it was the power company. Sure enough, it was the surveyors that come out to determine what exactly the problem is. I asked if they had an estimate on when we'd get power back, and the man told me, "This outage is a priority in our system. We're trying to get this problem resolved tonight, but no later than tomorrow." I burst into tears, I did, because I didn't want to impose on people any longer.

I think also most people in our county should have power on by today. Our county wasn't hit nearly as hard as Seattle and those areas on the other side of the water. I watched the news yesterday as R's house, and the news people were making Seattle sound like a major disaster area.

I woke up at 1am last night and heard a big truck heading up the street. I snuck into the kitchen of my neighbor's house to look out their window, and sure enough, a truck was at my pole! Fifteen minutes later they were gone, and I could see the soft glow of my porch light.

So now I'm back, and I'm very grateful to have my electricity back on. I'm pretty sure everything in my fridge is fine since it was so cold in the house, and I was without power for only 55 hours. When we lost power for 80 hours, we didn't lose any food.

I'm just hoping that this is our one bad windstorm for the winter.