Black out!

The other day Jacob and I were at home, just hanging out. I was doing laundry, Jacob was wandering around doing whatever it is that 4-year-olds do to keep themselves occupied. Then, in the middle of all this exciting activity, the lights abruptly went out. My immediate thought was to flee to Target because that is often my immediate thought. Jacob was not excited about that though, so we lit a few candles and I proceeded to clean the kitchen and then both bathrooms while Jacob continued to wander around in his 4-year-old manner.

3 hours later the big kids were home from school and the power was still out. In fact, the power had gone out at the school as well, so the poor teachers had been bravely carrying on by the light from the windows. I decided at this point that we had to do something so we walked to Safeway in the rain and bought 3 Duraflame firelogs. We had to walk because, as it turns out, the garage door is electrically powered and Joseph had the other car that is normally kept outside.

As you can see we were in very poor spirits due to the hard times we had fallen on.

But anyway, these logs are great for our situation since they are so benign and steady-burning because we don't have much of a hearth so any kind of spark ends up in the carpet.

And that is how we ended up, on a Friday night, gathered around a fire roasting marshmallows* and eating Amazon Prime Now PF Changs.

In all we were without power for about 6 hours. Things were getting pretty dire - my phone battery was at like 4% and in power save mode by the end of it all. We did survive the ordeal though, with all 7 gallons of milk in the fridge intact.

*And yes, I know it is not totally kosher to roast in the fumes of a Duraflame, but I looked it up and it seems like there are no toxic chemicals, it just makes your food taste weird. And the sugar content of the marshmallows was enough to overcome that for our kids.