Hard to Explain

Last night was cold. By all accounts, the air temperature was somewhere near -17F, with West winds up to 30 mph, leaving the wind chill at somewhere around -70F. The car was safely in the garage (still no block heater, but getting it out of the wind definitely helps). At about 12:30am, Stephan got up to start the car, just for reassurance. He had a hard time getting back to sleep, and was just barely there when he heard a strange noise. He thought about it for a minute, then realized that the power was going on and off.

The noise was the woman's voice on our answering machine prompting us to reset the date and time. He made sure the water was still running in the faucets, which is wasn't. The town water pump is on a generator, which must not have kicked in last night. I'm not positive of the story there, but there wasn't water coming through the pipes.

We got all the animals buried under, around, and above the AMAZING down comforter that Aunt Florentine gave us last winter. That may have saved us last night, with how drafty our house is. I was too panicked to sleep, and just kept thinking about the many ways that things could go wrong.

This morning, about 4am, the power came back on. Stephan was back to work by 5am, and I had 3/4 clients cancel on me due to the cold, and other trials. When I came home early at 3pm, the temperature was still less than -11F, with 5-10 mph wind. I checked all the faucets, all were good. I tried to start the laundry, but... no water. The small plastic hose that runs along the basement wall had frozen.

Melanie, if Aunt Florentine's comforter saved our lives last night, the space heater you gave me for my birthday many years ago may have saved our house. I immediately set the heater up next to the frozen pipes, and within 60 minutes, had a load of laundry spinning happily.

I'm trying not to let this get me down. Tonight's temperatures and wind are supposed to be the same as last night. Hopefully we won't lose power. I'll be home all day tomorrow to monitor pipes, water, etc... but I am seriously running out of clothes to wash!