Power to the People! But Not on Cape Cod

The snow hurricane hit Sunday night.  Branches kept landing on the roof. Willow and I clutched each other whenever a particular loud bang slammed the roof.

Shortly after we got out of bed, when we had just turned on the bath, the power went out. We have a new generator, but something was wrong. It would turn on for 30 seconds and go off.  Woody kept trying all day to get it to go on, while it got colder and colder.  We were sitting in the dark on a sofa moved close to the gas-powered fireplace. No fan so we had to get close to warm ourselves at all.

Finally on his 9th trip out through the deep snow and wind, he studied the electric panel and first turned off everything except the pump for the well and the furnace.  The generator stuttered, went off, went on, stuttered and then came on again and stayed on…for a total of 103 hours.  We lived in terror every day that it would turn off again and we’d freeze.  Slowly we warmed up.  We found we could turn on 2 lights.  Cautiously, we turned the freezer back on on Thursday morning so we didn’t lose everything we had put up...pesto, soups, strawberries, and freezer jam, not to mention the lamb we buy every summer from the Noon family farm up in Maine. We were cautious with lights, there was occasional flickering, but the darned thing did keep working.

We had no internet, no land line. We had Verizon for our cells.  That went out too on Thursday and we were totally cut off from information, friends, help, everything. Finally, it came back on yesterday.  I couldn’t answer zines that are querying me wanting poems or wanting me to check poems they accepted; donations to anyone or anything, I couldn’t answer my agent ‘s query about German rights. Cut off. All along, we couldn’t get in touch with friends who were unreachable, including my assistant, as Comcast was out.  No internet, no landlines, no TV, no Roku, no Facebook. No weather. Nothing, really.  Thursday, I began to write a little although saving it has been haphazard.  We have a gas stove in the kitchen so I have been cooking, but no dishwasher. It broke a couple of days before the blizzard and the new one could not be delivered.

The PO is finally open and Woody brought home whatever came through.  Supermarkets in Orleans were open Friday and Wood did the week’s shopping. Our local Wellfleet market opened yesterday. The whole time power was out, we both read by natural light, but by evening my eyes are tired and I can no longer try to read or write. During the days I embarked on a bit of decluttering, when I could get Woody interested.  I enjoy decluttering; he hates it. But if he’s bored enough, I can recruit him. 

Gigi, who is in Florida offered us her Harwich house where the gallery is – it had power. Two other people offered us their houses to share their power, but only one of them would let us bring our cats and I was not about to desert them. And the one friend who said, bring the cats lives 4 hours away.  Stephanie abandoned her house in town and as Tasha returned to Dartmouth, went with her to have heat and comfort. Main Street power went on long before us, so a day before we got power, she was back.

Finally, finally the power came on Friday late afternoon. We were both low, wondering when we would get power back, but suddenly it came on.  We celebrated with champagne last night. Suddenly we were connected to the world again.  Comcast came back some time later and that evening, we watched what

news we can bear [we used to watch CBS but since a Grump lackey took it over, we are boycotting it] then Jeopardy, then The Hunting Party on Roku. So glad to zone out on the tube!

The first thing we did after we could turn on the water heater, as soon as there was enough hot water to bathe was jump in and wash our bodies and our hair. To feel clean was amazing. Everything needs doing – I had to deal with 111 emails this morning – and both last week’s and next this week’s blog will go to woody to be put up.

To be able to write is such a joy. Already a new poem. I can’t do more than scribble notes by hand.  We are still on cloud nine. I was a bit bored by our routines after deep snow and ice kept me in the house for 2 weeks, but now routines are delightful. The cats think so took. They are all three happy now.