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I forgot to explain about how we have been keeping our bodies clean.

I always keep one or two containers of Wet Ones in the house and car. These are really good for when you don't have access to soap and water, at least for your hands. On the Saturday after the storm I went out to Target and got a few more Wet Ones, some baby wipes, Summer's Eve cleansing wipes and these cleaning clothes that are normally for people who are bedridden or disabled and can't use a shower (click). It wasn't until about 5 days in that I found out that our town elementary school was open as a shelter. They were providing food, wifi and a shower! So I have had one shower in a week. But it was a glorious shower.

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For the last week+ this is how we've been living:

• Heat - We have a very large wood stove in the basement that we normally use for supplemental heating in the winter. We buy about 4 cords of wood each summer for the coming cold weather. If I can keep the wood stove going all day I can actually get the main part of the house up to 70 degrees which is warmer than we normally keep it.
• Water - Luckily we are in the habit of keeping bottled water. I had about 10 gallons when the power went off (we have a well for water and we need electricity for the water pump to pump water out of the well and into the house, that's why we don't have any water. If we had "city water" then we probably would still have running water - but not hot running water - but there is no "city water" in my neighborhood). We've been using that water for cooking and some clean up. I've refilled bottles where I can - work and at emergency shelters.
• Light - I love candles so I always have a ton of them on hand. I had 200 tea lights and bought 300 more yesterday. We also have a few flashlights, one of which is solar powered rechargeable. We just leave it in the window during the day and at night it's all ready to go. I highly recommend it - click. Batteries were hard to find for the other flashlights. And the rechargeable batteries that we have of course discharged after a while. I am charging up and few at work right now.
• Cooking food - I can cook a little on top of the big wood stove. Anything that can be thrown into a pot and heated up I can cook. We've mostly been eating canned soup for dinner (Amy's - click). We've also been able to have hot tea and while my MIL was still here I could boil 2 eggs each morning for her.
• Food storage - I took everything out of the refrigerator that could fit into one large and one small cooler. For cold packs I filled zip-lock freezer bags full of ice from the trees. Since at first it was very cold outside the stuff in the freezer was just thrown out into the back yard, but a few days after the storm the temperature was up around 50 degrees and I lost all the frozen food. We still have cheese, soy milk, butter, yogurt, veggies and some other things.
• Utensils, pots, etc. - I bought a bunch of paper plates, bowls and cups so that we don't have to use too much water for cleaning. I've also been using vinegar to clean countertops and some eating utensils. After we use the paper products we burn them in the wood stove.
• Toilet - So far we've been using the toilet normally except for flushing. We have a stream that runs through our property so The Man has been filling buckets with water there and bringing them inside to flush the waste down. Yesterday my niece sent me a portable toilet that she used in Iraq (click). We've been concerned about adding too much waste to the septic since the pump for the leach field can't work.
• Telephone - the telephone works if you want to call me, although on Saturday we lost that for about 24 hours. We have a cell phone charger for the car so we've been using that for the cell phones. Strangely, my service has been on roaming since the electricity went out.

There's other stuff that I can't think of right now. I will make another entry when I do.

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Yesterday The Man drove down to NJ and back to deposit his mother at the home of BIL the Elder. After the power went out and it was known that it wouldn't be coming back for days, I stayed home with her and made sure the fire was kept going and that she had food and drink. Because of this I wasn't able to go to work and had to use vacation days. So in order to get me back to work and give us one less thing to worry about The Man took MIL back to NJ. He even rented a car to make the trip. He was exhausted when he got home. My worthless BILs couldn't be bothered to even meet The Man half way. I hate my in-laws.

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Most of Friday was spent removing downed trees and limbs from the road and driveway. Our neighbor was completely blocked in by birch trees that had bent over into her drive. All day long the trees cracked and fell. At one point The Man and I raced to get out of the way of the top of a falling tree. Our birch trees were bent to the ground and many of them had to be to be topped off with the chain saw to get them out of the way. A stand of about 6 tall cherry trees were completely uprooted in our yard. The ice on everything was pretty and the landscape look like Narnia. I walked between two bent over trees thought I had been transported to another world. Strange and eerie.

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We knew bad weather was coming but you never expect it to be that bad. We were warned that there might be power outages, but still, we've never had the power out longer than a couple of hours (power outages are common in New Hampshire).

Thursday evening the rain started. As it landed on surfaces - ground, road, bushes, trees - the rain froze. Friday morning there was a good inch of ice wrapped around every twig.

In the middle of the night I woke up to the sound of cracking wood. The treetops on our property and across the road in the forest were cracking off from the weight of the ice. It was a frightening sound.

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At 10pm on Thursday, December 11, 2008 the electricity abandoned us and has not been seen since. It has been almost 168 hours which translates into one week.

EDIT: They are predicting the power will be restored by Christmas. That will be 2 weeks without electricity, running water or heat.

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