Karen Heenan

Outdoor solar lights on the coffee
table. At least they didn't give off heat

It's officially summer. I thought I wouldn't have much to write about this week, because we were expecting a heatwave and I don't do well in heat waves. I didn't do well before menopause; now that my internal thermostat has set itself about 5° higher, I do less well.

Last Thursday, there was a prediction of thunderstorms. By late afternoon nothing had happened and we all assumed the forecasters were wrong again. Then, suddenly, a strong blew through the front of the house and I heard a bang from the back yard. That bang was my patio umbrella heading for the back fence. I grabbed it, got pulled along with it for a few feet, and finally wrestled it to the ground. It then rumbled once and rained for a few minutes and stopped. 

No biggie, right? 

Shortly before 5:30, the lights flickered and went out. And stayed out. For 28 hours.

George Carlin had a bit about how society would go to hell without electricity, and once again, George wasn't wrong. The main thing was trying to keep the phone charged, so I could see what was going on in the world, but then there was also the worry of my two basement freezers. Which were full. 

Thankfully, the grid in our town is so uneven that a neighbor at the other end of my block actually had power, and because she has a fussy toddler, she keeps almost no food in her freezer. So we moved all the freezer stuff to Rachel's house. 

I will not discuss the grudge I now have against our local pizza place, which still had power but closed their dining room so neighbors couldn't camp out and charge their phones. Even if they ordered food. So the power outage is turning into a weight loss plan, because I've just given up pizza.  

The lights came back on Friday night, and I swapped a bottle of wine for four bags of still frozen food. 

That should have been the end of it.

Yesterday at around 6:30, I went downstairs to do some laundry. Heatwave = lots of extra sweaty clothes. While down there, I noticed that the freezer's light wasn't on. Being versed in old style tech, I kicked it. The light flickered and went out again. I opened the lid. It was cold, but not freezing. Some quick research told me that several potentially fatal things could have happened when the power came back on, and as the freezer was 15 years old, we decided the best course was a quick replacement. 

Except it wasn't quick. Amazon couldn't get me anything until next week. Walmart could have it delivered to the store, but didn't have any in store. Home Depot only had refrigerator size freezers. So we ended up at Best Buy, who had a nice little 5 cubic foot freezer on sale. Within 30 minutes, it was downstairs and plugged in, and the old, leaking freezer was dragged up and put outside to finish draining. 

So, a 90° Sunday where we unexpectedly moved to small appliances and spent several hundred dollars. 

Still less miserable than losing all that frozen food.