We Have the Power

Several years ago our electric company changed its name from "Consumers Power" to "Consumers Energy".

I thought the change was dumb.

If I say to someone, "We don't have power," usually they understand that to mean electric power. But if I say, "We don't have energy," they are more likely to start suggesting vitamin supplements or commenting on our advancing ages.

Anyway, our power is finally back on, and our telephone is working again.

We were pretty lucky. Although our property has a lot of large old trees, mostly maples, this is the only significant branch that came down. I ratchet-lopped the side branches off and rolled the thick part off the fence. I don't know if we are going to be able to get the smaller second branch down from where it is hanging up in the tree.

When I was a kid, my parents did a lot of primitive camping, coincidentally up in Luce County in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, the site of this summer's forest fire. And when we were first married, my husband and I did quite a bit of primitive camping. That means in a tent, in campgrounds with maybe a fire ring, pit latrines, and a hand-pump for water.

So while the power was out, it was like camping in our house. We got out the Coleman stove and had hot water and hot meals. We lit the house, especially the windowless bathroom, with tea-light candles and oil candles.

Thursday night's storm also brought rain, so we put the big, heavy-duty plastic calf-watering tub under the downspout and caught enough rain for flushing the toilet and (after filtering and boiling) cleaning dishes or washing hair.

Since my husband had to work Friday, he brought home a huge cooler full of ice from the National Guard armory where he works, as well as drinking water. I put the perishable refrigerator stuff in our cooler, and put bags of ice in the freezer.

We have a habit of making "pop ice" in our small chest freezer, using clean, empty soda-pop bottles: you nearly fill the bottle with water, squeeze the air out, put the top on tight, and let it freeze. (After a while you figure out how much to squeeze out so the expanding ice doesn't rupture the bottle.) This makes a big block of ice that doesn't (unless it ruptures) melt all over your cooler, plus as it does melt you have drinkable water.

We had a good amount of these frozen ice blocks in the freezer, so the meat at the very bottom never thawed. We did lose the ice cream I just bought (except for what we drank for breakfast Saturday morning), and I think we'll be eating those thawed and re-frozen pizzas this week, but at least it wasn't hundreds of dollars worth of anything. And everything at least stayed at refrigerator temperatures, so it didn't spoil.

This is about all I knitted on. I finished the snowflake graph from the Orenburg class, knitted an "X" for a spacer, and started on a graph called "bowtie".

In the photos, the first thing I noticed about Orenburg gossamer shawls was how geometric the patterns were, all lines and angles. In real life the first thing I noticed was how light and shimmery they were, and how hard it was to notice the relatively stiff lines of the patterns.

(Then there was the shawl where the basic Orenburg lace knitting elements were used to create flowing stems, leaves, and flowers: that was the one with the $1500.00 price tag. Usually I can tell which item is the most expensive in a vendor's booth: that would be the one I notice from a distance and instantly love.)