My herbs before their haircut.

I think I’m becoming a bit unhinged in my otherwise normal state of mind.  With all the hacking that takes place in the world these days, I am immediately suspicious when we have a power outage.  Lights out and the wheels of paranoia begin to turn.

We have lived in our present home for 4 1/2 years and until recently, have never had an issue with our electric other than the occasional thunderstorm causing an obvious but temporary interruption in service.  However, in the last 3 weeks we have had one outage per week with each lasting a minimum of 2 hours.  Randy or I will immediately report it to our electric company and they will respond with a text and a time estimate of restoration (always 4 hours and always immediate.)  How could they know that quickly how long it’s going to take to fix it when they aren’t sure where the problem is exactly? Hmmm.

Sometimes the electric company’s system will even text after the power has been restored to tell us what happened and sometimes not (the second outage was supposedly an animal of some sort loitering where it shouldn’t have been.)  It’s cause for concern I say.  Monkeying with the power grid is not cool.  If the hackers can penetrate the airlines’ systems why not our power companies’?  My pantry has been expanding over the past year; I want to be prepared in case a large scale crisis should develop and we find ourselves without the essentials even for a short time.  Call me crazy.

Weekend before last I was feeling especially domestic.  On Saturday I began with harvesting my tomatoes, okra and a variety of herbs.  As I was loading up my dehydrator with basil, sage and chives, I decided to prepare a couple of make ahead freezer meals for the coming week in an effort to be more organized and free up some of my time after work. On the make ahead menu was Chicken Enchiladas and  Creamy Italian Chicken from a website I had found that promoted simpler living.

On Sunday my youngest called to say him and his girlfriend would be stopping by.  I felt pretty proud as I whipped out the Creamy Italian Chicken in its foil pan out of the freezer.  My domestic activity was paying off even sooner than I planned!  My first thought was to let it thaw completely then put it in a 350 degree oven until done, but I placed it directly in the oven and turned it to 300 and walked away.  My simpler life was coming together nicely!  Encouraged, I moved on and broke out the bread machine.  After placing all my ingredients for Italian bread in I plugged it in, punched in my bread type, hit start and walked away.  I was on a roll.

Next on the menu was steamed broccoli and pasta, which would be excellent with the chicken since it was going to have an abundance of sauce.  The chicken wouldn’t be ready for an hour and a half to two hours so I planned to cook the broccoli and pasta right before time to serve.  I went about to find other domestic activities that would help with my simpler life.  Gazing over the house I noted that each room contained a nice layer of dust but was convinced that the dust removal process would just complicate things so I walked away.

Later Randy and I were relaxing in the living room watching the old Parent Trap movie when it happened.  You guessed it, lights out.  No TV, no A/C, no oven, no dehydrator and worst of all, no bread machine baking.   Of course, the time frame for restoration was 4 hours.  So much for my careful planning.  Since I had put the chicken dish in to bake immediately it was actually going to be done enough to eat.

Wes and Emily arrived soon thereafter only to walk in to a dark house lit  only with 3 of my kerosene lamps  and a few candles.  With no means to cook the broccoli or pasta, I tossed a salad together and we had our dinner with a lot of the sauce left over with no pasta to pour it over.  The bread was just a motionless lump of heavy half-baked dough.  The electric came back on just as we were finishing our meal.  Great.

We are planning on purchasing a large generator for the house to power the important things (Randy’s CPAP being one of the major ones.)  In the past we could always stay with family elsewhere or get a room in town.  The older we get the less we want to load up our things plus Jake and all of his things and go anywhere unless it’s a vacation of course.   We don’t plan on being at the mercy of the power company much longer!

I await this week’s destined power outage although when and how long I can’t anticipate.  I feel a trip to town coming on to pick up extra lamp oil and whatever else I can think of to ease my concerns and simplify my life.