Misadventures of a day without power

Yesterday a thunderstorm blew through, bringing quarter-sized hail and 80+ mph wind gusts. While the storm wasn't serious compared to what's going on in Joplin, MO, Tuscaloosa, AL, and countless other towns ravaged by tornadoes recently—it mostly caused downed trees and power lines—190,000 homes in my metro area lost power last night.

I didn't sleep well. Besides the fact it was hot and still, I kept waking up thinking about the food in the fridge. Thankfully, our fridge is fairly empty since we're coming up on grocery day, but still... I kept adding up the cost of the things that might spoil. Chicken, turkey, salmon, round steak, bacon, frozen fruit, cheeses, vegetables, condiments... Two half-gallons of organic milk and chocolate milk were barely cool this morning—that's $8.00 down the drain right there.

Thankfully, my mom has power. This morning Bear and I loaded 6 or 7 Wal-Mart bags and took them to her house. The only casualties of the outage were our creamy dressings, like Ranch and mayo, a few yogurts, a freezer-burnt carton of vanilla ice cream, and a some popsicles. Not too bad, I say.

Twice now, our cats have torn out all the window screens (they're so sure they want to be outdoor kitties—I'm confident they'd feel differently if I actually let them spend a 95 degree day outside) and we haven't replaced the screens yet, so we couldn't open the windows all the way last night. Instead, we cracked the windows in our bedroom a few inches to let the breeze in. Sometime during the night, I got freaked out and closed the one directly above our bed.

This morning, I noticed one of the cats sniffing a couple-inch-long blackish thing on the floor. Having learned the hard way not to grab unknown things without my glasses on (I once mistook a thumbnail-sized spider for a piece of fuzz and nearly got myself bit), I put my glasses on and investigated. And what was this odd thing on my carpet? 

A SLUG!

I am insanely afraid of slugs. Seriously, they terrify me. Even the cats were scared!

Bear went outside, and what did he find? About 35 slugs on the siding near our bedroom window. If I hadn't closed the window above our bed last night, one (or MORE!) slugs might've crawled in on me while I was sleeping.

And then I wouldn't have been able to write this blog because I would be in an insane asylum.

The power company estimates our electric will be back on between 5-11pm tomorrow night. Back in 2003, a hurricane knocked our power out for 2 weeks, so this isn't, by far, the longest I've gone without electric. However, it's a pain, so here's hoping the electric's back on sooner rather than later!

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