For the past three and a half days, I’ve been holed up in my house with two of my children due to snow/ice/sleet. I thought that was bad enough, until we lost power for the last day and a half and I was holed up in the one warm room with a teen and a pre-teen with no access to Facebook or Xbox, and horror of horrors, cell phone batteries slowly losing their charges! What did children in pioneer families do to entertain themselves, I wonder?

At night we slept in front of the fireplace to keep warm. (Which doesn’t work unless someone stays up to maintain the fire, BTW.) This morning I woke with the sun. I climbed out of my cacoon of blankets into the freezing cold and ran to the outhouse. (Not really, but except for being inside, it could have been….ice cold toilet seat and all.) I returned to the fireplace, stirred the embers of the fire, piled on some logs, and got a roaring blaze going so my family would not wake to the same chilly fate. Then I took care of the animals. (Well one animal, a dog….but still, I had to go outside to walk him in snow higher than my boots.) With the dog settled I dragged up more firewood and water, before heading back to the warmth of my pallet. (Granted, the firewood was cut and neatly stacked in the garage, and the water was bottled and in the basement, but still.)

I realize most pioneer women didn’t climb back into bed after completing their morning “chores”, and their lives were much harder than mine, even without electricity. But I felt like one none the less, at least a modified version. The one thing I refused to do was sponge off with freezing cold water. And since I didn’t want to ruin one of my pots trying to heat water in the fireplace, I waited for Central Hudson to get the power back on, which they did this afternoon. Woo Hoo!!!

Now, back in the 21st century, I have no desire to revisit the past, unless it’s in the pages of a book!

Do you have any storm stories you’d like to share? If not, when was the last time you lost power, and how did you manage?