In The Dark

Last Thursday the state of NH was hit with what they now say is the worst ice storm in 30 years, taking down thousands of trees and knocking out power to more than half of the homes in the state, over 400,000! We were affected for 5 days and honestly we were and are one of the lucky ones, we had heat in a 3rd of the house thanks to a propane stove which meant I could keep the children warm on make shift beds in the breezeway and office and prevent the pipes from freezing when the temperatures dropped to 10 degrees outside.

The birds were also relocated to the breezeway and thanks to a wonderful neighbor with a generator we were able to fill up a few gallon jugs and 2 liter bottles with water every day so we could occasionally flush the toilets and make pasta nightly on our little camp stove.

Saturday night a friend found a store not too far away that had just got in some generators and we were able to buy a small one that gave us the ability to run the pellet stove and a couple of lights and a laptop with 'very' limited internet capability thanks to my husbands cell phone, so I was able to let customers know what was happening and warm more of the house up so the girls could sleep back in their beds, albeit bundled up as the upstairs heat was still out. It also meant I didn't have to stay up each night lighting candles for extra heat in the parts of the house that were getting really cold.

Power came back late last night and apart from 2 freezers and a fridge full of rotting and stinky food, we're in pretty good shape. Called the local shelter tonight to see if I could make some hot food for any families stuck there for the evening but they said they are ok for today so I'll check back in with them tomorrow.
Like I said, we're lucky, there are still about 100,000 people without power, including my daughters best friend on the next street whose road isn't even passable due to a huge fallen tree across the whole road which took down all the streets power lines and another two streets only just around the corner from us where the trees and utility poles snapped and they just haven't been able to get it fixed yet.
I really hope the estimates of 2-5 weeks to restore power is wrong and everyone can be back in their homes for Christmas safe and warm.