Powerless

So, how has your 2009 been so far? Good I hope. Here's a little taste of mine.

"You have reached Nova Scotia Power's outage line. To report an outage, or for outage updates, press one." BEEP

"To report a complete loss of power, please press one." BEEP

Happy New Year.

We first lost power a little before 3pm on Thursday. Not a big deal, we thought. We're right in the middle of town, I'm sure it won't be off for long.

Within about an hour, our generator-less house, completely reliant on electric heat, was getting pretty chilly. We all put on an extra sweater, gathered in the living room, and hoped the French doors would keep some warmth in until the power was restored.

We were wrong.

At a little after 4pm, with grumbling tummies and no means to cook, we bundled up and braved the blizzard, making our way to the only open restaurant in Port Hawkesbury. Half a kilometer later, we knew our efforts were in vain, since there was about four feet of snow on Reeves Street. Home we went, where we dined on cheese, cereal, and cookies. Yummy.

By 6pm (which was, by the way, the time NSP had originally forecast the power to be restored), our house was freezing. We would have gone to stay with someone who had heat, but the roads were impassable and the weather didn't look to be improving. We broke out the comforters and candles, turned on the radio, and hunkered down.

We waited. And waited and waited. The novelty of, "there's no lights and no TV, let's play with flashlights" wore off rather quickly, and soon we were two cranky adults and two bored children, all freezing to death in the dark.

Approximate restoration time went from 6pm, to 11:30pm, to 5am Friday. The flames of anger raging inside us did not, unfortunately, keep us warm at all.

The evening hours were spent mostly in silence. I cursed the power company, plotted murder on half a dozen people, tried to visualize a beach in Mexico, re-evaluated my thoughts about homeless people, explained the difference between candles and "decorative candles", planned the purchase of alternate heating sources, snapped at my husband, and swore to donate money and blankets to Social Services first thing in the morning.

We had to resign ourselves to the inevitability of bedtime, and wondered how we would make it through the night in a house with an internal temperature hovering around two degrees. With no hope of power restoration in sight, we called it a night. The sleeping arrangements were finalized and I found myself in bed with the two kids, both in layers and layers of socks and sweaters, our rib cages partly crushed by the seven comforters required to keep us semi-warm. My husband, ever the martyr, held his own in another bed with what blankets remained. It was a long, cold night.

Imagine our surprise to wake up and still have no power. We waited, most impatiently, for a few hours, but gave up when we could see our breath. To the in-laws we went, until the power was restored at 4pm on Friday.

We returned home and cranked every heater we had. By about 7:30pm, we were finally comfortable enough to remove a layer of clothing and start living again.

And at 7:47pm, the power went out.

The expletive-laced tirades that followed are not repeatable in this fine family newspaper.

What little heat had returned to our house was gone in no time flat, and like the worst case of deja-vu ever, we huddled in the living room, under blankets, listening to the radio.

I swore to keep calling the power company, and I did repeatedly until I thought their phone might explode. Let it explode, I thought; this is ridiculous. I'll call every fifteen minutes until they get so tired of hearing my voice, the person answering will drive to Port Hawkesbury and climb the pole to fix it themselves, just for the sake of shutting me up.

Maybe it worked, or maybe it was sheer coincidence, but regardless, the lights came on at 10:30pm. By 11:00, thanks to a few powerful space heaters, the kids were warm and sleeping in their beds.

I could easily write an entire article about Nova Scotia Power, but I won't. Intelligent, professional journalists have (and will continue to have) a field day writing about a huge corporation with mind-blowing profits and constant rate hikes, who still have not adjusted their equipment and practices to Nova Scotian weather conditions, even though those conditions have existed since the dawn of electricity. I'll leave it to them to sort out. My fingers are still too numb to type it all.