There was an extensive blackout this weekend. Winter storms knocked out power in my area and I was without power for almost 30 hours. I live alone on the 21st floor of a condo building.
At first it was peaceful. I just sat there and cuddled with my two dogs and fell back to sleep. I watched them chase each other around. I had to sleep because I was working the night shift. I turned on my phone just so I could check when power would come back on and realized I was at 5% battery. I switched it to airplane mode to conserve battery but it died soon after.
When my phone died I also realized I didn't know the time. I had no phone and no appliances to check the time. My phone was my alarm clock. So as soon as it got dark, I lit the only two candles I had, and I stayed awake worried that I'd forget about waking up in time for work.
I also had no food. I was starving. I was doing a sugar cleanse and had gotten rid of all the snack food that didn't need cooking - cookies, crackers, I looked out of my 21st floor window and saw darkness around, so I figured I'd probably try to pick something up on the way to work.
And I had no elevators. Technically we were supposed to have one working elevator, that was Elevator #3 and Elevator #3 had just broken down last Thursday. So before work I had to walk down 21 flights of stairs and back up in order to walk my pups. And of course one of them is terrified of stairs and I had to carry him back up and down.
I got the time from someone in the building lobby. I realized that the blackout had lasted 6 hours up to this point. I had 6 tubs of Halo Top in the fridge (I'm saving it for the summer after my cleanse okay - don't judge me). I worry about it melting, but refrain from opening the fridge because I heard that it can retain its temperature for up to 24 hours after losing power. I grab them as soon as I'm ready to leave for work and toss them into the freezer at work.
So TL;DR
- Living alone with no electricity and no technology sucks - No one to talk to, no one to play games with, and my dogs only kept me entertained for a couple of hours.
- Having to be up at a certain time for work sucks with no technology - because I had trouble falling asleep (I watch TV to sleep)
- Not knowing what time it is sucks.
- Having no elevator sucks ass when you live higher than the 5th floor and have 2 dogs that need to go out constantly;
- Having nothing to eat sucks. I wish I kept those RTE meals; and
- Having no freezer sucks. No ice cream. :(
If anyone has any tips on how to survive my next extended blackout, without having to acquire a lot of stuff, please let me know.
Submitted April 17, 2018 at 01:35AM by oogiewoogie https://ift.tt/2H6zBuJ
