Blackout!

Yesterday about 3:30 pm all our power went out. That's not uncommon where we live because we are about a mile from a casino, and people drive so fast to get there to lose their money that they crash on our windy two land road. Or they're so distracted from losing all their money that they crash on the way down. If it rains...forget about it.

Talked to Steve who works about forty-five minutes away and he told me the power was out all over San Diego County. Turns out it was from Arizona to Mexico to Orange County, CA, which included all of San Diego County. We busily started finding our alternate lighting sources like flashlights, lanterns, and candles. Found all the matches, lighters, batteries, and radios.

We had an advantage since it was late afternoon and it wasn't nighttime already. It was blazing hot here though but quickly cooled off on our patio where we spent the evening once the sun went down.

We didn't know how long the power would be out so I would only let the kids use the bread for peanut butter sandwiches. If they wanted a ham sandwich had to be on a bun. Who wants a pb bun sandwich? I even allowed us to devour our lunch items like the little chip packs, cookies, applesauce.

We sat out on the patio and listened to radio reports. Cut the watermelon and we all stood on the edge of the patio so we our watermelon drippings would drip into the dirt and not on the patio where it would have to be washed off. I finished my book about Harriett Tubman and the kids had fun playing in the dark. We transferred cold foods around to keep them good, we have a generator in our toy hauler so before we went to bed Steve hooked up our garage freezer and fridge to the toy hauler generator.

I was thankful that we have four acres to live on. We have a water storage tank that holds 10,000 gallons (I think), the only problem is our well is on electricity so that was all the water we had, but we did have water. Our toilet tanks have to be manually filled with water when the power goes out, we have about three flushes or so per toilet.

All of our kids were home so we didn't have to worry about them. Once Steve got home we stayed put. The traffic lights weren't working so the roads were a mess. Everyone left work at once so that put a bottleneck on all the roads.

Our power came back on about 12:30 am. Our hall light came on to tell us that all was well again. I think a lot of people were a little sad that they got their power back because while it was out they talked to their neighbors, played with the kids, and enjoyed the night time sky. Things we should be doing everyday but we don't.