Day 286: Living In The Dark Ages

There are barely any words to describe the misery that was this day. 

It started at 2am, when I woke up to beeeeeuuuuurp that is everything shutting off in the house when the power unexpectedly went out. Including the white noise fan in our room (and the ones in each of the kids rooms), the heat that was on because it was 35 degrees out, and the kids' night lights. 

I looked out the window and saw that the whole block was out of power. The first thing I thought was of our plethora of outdoor Christmas lights. "Oh my gosh, we've done it. We blew the whole neighborhood from our lights!" and was almost impressed with us, but thanks very much it was NOT our fault!

I laid awake in bed for a bit waiting for the power to come back on (I basically can't sleep in the silence. At all). Cam woke up screaming that his fan was off and his night lights were dark. Calen coughed all night and there was no white noise to drown it out. The cat was walking down the hallway LOUDER THAN ANY CAT IN THE HISTORY OF CATS with her claws clicking on the wood floors. I could hear the dog moving around in her crate downstairs in the laundry room across the house. I could hear mice farting in the walls. I could hear the air. 

And so I didn't sleep. And the power never came back on. 

Since the power was still out while the kids were getting ready for school, and we were out of basically all dry food ("because we'll eat eggs!" I thought - yesterday), the kids had string cheese and granola bars for breakfast. A notice came out from the base: No power for most of the day. A transformer had blown and they don't have the parts to fix it. So, I dropped them off to school and marched my ass to the Starbucks inside Target with two of my friends (also without power) and got the biggest coffee I could find, and bumped into basically our entire neighborhood. Because what the hell else are people going to do, sit in their dark, freezing cold houses?

A humongous coffee and a breakfast sandwich, because I wasn't in the mood for string cheese for breakfast 

Cold, without power and feeling Grinchy. So we wore the most obnoxious Christmas sweaters available

After school, still without power, we decided to make the most of it. During my 5 hours out in town drinking coffee, I bought some cans of fake snow. Because if we're not going to have power, it better be because of a snow storm. We dumped it on the kids picnic table in the garage and Cam and the neighbor Kindergarten boys had a blast with it. 

Our fake snow storm. Also Cam wore mittens and a hat for effect. 

Then the kids came inside and wrote their official letters to Santa. I found some RAD giant cloth envelopes addressed to Santa that were perfect for the occasion. 

Letters to Santa

"If you see our decorations they are winter wonderful!" He's the best. 

Bam short and to the point. 

We finally got power, but not in the way we wanted. They still can't find the parts to replace the transformer. So, we are all running on a generator. Which means NO CHRISTMAS LIGHTS until the replace it. Which could be WEEKS. Which basically just ruined my Christmas season (also, all the Christmas lights are on inside my house. Because screw them). And tell me after 2 hours of sleep that I can't turn on my Christmas lights that we worked so hard to put up!! We are only allowed to do laundry every other day, and can't run major appliances at the same time. 

Merry Christmas you filthy animal.

For extra fun everyone's perishables in all of our refrigerators went bad after 12 hours of no power. So, we went out with our family friends (also victims of generator hell) to Buffalo Wild Wings to stress eat and let the kids be wild. Because who wants to eat Ramen and granola bars for dinner anyways. 

Wild Boys at Buffalo Wild Wings. 

After dinner we went to the theater district of Petaluma and turned in the boys' letters to the big mailbox to send them away to the North Pole. 

We finished off at Powell's candy store for a quick treat (because we needed as much cheer as possible) and went home to our stupid dark house with no Christmas lights on outside. 

What a drag. 

I mean really, we made a good day out of a shitty day. But we better be able to have REAL electricity soon, because I want to turn my damn Christmas lights on. 

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