It’s one of those nights when the wind is whipping and the snow is blowing. They’re calling it a blizzard, the great blizzard of 2011. School’s canceled tomorrow and I doubt I could go in to work at the usual time even if I wanted to. When I got home about 3:30 pm today, the road was already mostly drifted over, and barely passable.
They say there’s a pretty good El Nina happening now. They say storms in the continental US may have more moisture to work with because of global warming or climate change. Whatever. It is what it is, and there’s not a damn thing we’re gonna do about it.
I’m sitting in be wondering if the power is going to go off and how we’ll survive the next couple days of very cold weather if it does. But we’d be okay.
I’d close off both bedrooms, put the door back in the doorway to the dining room in close it, and hang a blanket or comforter across the doorway to the living room. Then at night we’d just have to heat the kitchen and the front room with the woodstove, and we’d all sleep on the futon out there. If it were sunny during the day, I’d open the doorway to the living room and we’d get some heat from that.
I’d bring the bucket toilet back upstairs and we’d all use that instead of the flush toilet. If it got down in the 30’s in the house at night, I’d drain the pipes.
We could cook using our regular stove, we’d just have to light the propane by hand. Keeping food we have cold would not be an issue.
We have a few gallons of drinking water in the basement. We have a 55-gallon barrel of water in the basement also, that could probably be used for drinking after filtering. We could also melt snow on the woodstove.
So living here for a week without electricity would not be that much of an issue. Beyond that, we’d start to run into some issues, but we might be able to make it until Spring. So bring it on.
Ending and Beginning 