Yesterday was Peter’s 50th birthday, and what proper way than to celebrate it with a windstorm?

By this time in my life I’ve been through several windstorms.  The experience of it looks something like this- it’s windy and then bam! something hits.  This happens a couple of times during the hour, or several hours.  Then, the wind picks up and bam! bam! bam! bam! bam! more things hit, and at this point you’re curious about what fell.  It sounds tame here, but if this continued any more than 15 seconds, the apprehension would turn to fear.  After the worst is over, it’s precariously calm.  The next day, it’s very calm, like you could hear a pin drop.  The sky looks clean if not clear, like it just got scrubbed with a brillo brush.

It’s mother nature’s way of doing housecleaning.

What was going on inside our house was this- the lights were flickering as I scrambled to get the cake batter ready to put into the oven.  I was making the gluten free four from scratch.  I just put in the baking powder when bam! I was enveloped in complete darkness.  My first thought: “I knew it.”

Fortunately, since we’ve been sleeping in the living room the last two months, Peter already had a lantern by his bed.  I trudged carefully so as not to stumble over the mattress.  I used the lantern to go to the garage to get two more lanterns out of the camping supplies.  I lit candles in the living room.  I wish they were for his birthday.

Polina fell asleep at 5 pm and slept until 7:30 am today, so she missed all of the excitement.

Peter told me he wanted to try the gluten-free pizza from a local chain for his birthday.  I texted Peter and we had the following exchange.

Me: “We lost power just now.  I was making a cake.  Oven off.  P sleeping.  Can u pick up the pizza?”

Me: “Im sorry things didn’t work out as planned on your birthday.:

Peter: “What does that mean?”

Me: “What does what mean?”

Peter: “No pizza”

Given my hurt feelings over what I interpret as a pattern of passive aggressive behavior (an evolutionary trait I find abhorrent), I thought it meant he was “punishing” me by not ordering a pizza.  When Peter came home, he thought I didn’t have anything for his birthday because I didn’t have time.  Turns out, he never got my first text, and I never got the question mark that he says he typed with his last text.

“Let’s put away our phones,” he said, during the blackout.  I couldn’t agree more.  Technology has it’s limitations.  Maybe we need a “blackout” once in a while with our technology.

Peter picked up the pizza and we ate by candlelight while our daughter slept.  (There was a time when I didn’t think this would be possible.)  We ate on paper plates that remained from Polina’s first birthday.  The power came on about two hours later, so we were able to watch the first episode of Mad Men that I  received that day from Netflix.  In the grand scheme of things it was a perfect evening.

I surveyed the scene last night in the dark after things were calm, out of concern and curiosity, hoping that some errant branch wouldn’t fall on me.  I couldn’t see well and I put my life in danger.  If I wasn’t a homeowner, I wouldn’t have gone outside.  But now this was our home, and I couldn’t see, so I went back inside.

This morning everything was clear.  I’m still amazed by how much damage 15 seconds can cause.  Really, that’s how long the worst of it felt when we heard big things falling on our roof.  This morning, we were happy that our house was standing with no major damage, although Peter is worried about our proximity to so many big trees around us.  I’m not.  I know these trees have withstood several windstorms in their lifetime.  I saw the tallest one sway on our property during the storm we had in August, which left 197,978 customers without power, according to the utility.

Fortunately, our power was restored within 2 hours last night.  That is extremely fast in our area for such a big windstorm.  The last power outage we had during the windstorm in August lasted a day and a half.

As of this writing, 48,000 people in our county remain without power.  Living in Seattle for 15 years, I can count on one hand the number of times we had a power outage.  Yesterday was our fourth time in the one year we have lived here.  It is a reminder that while Seattle is mushrooming as a city, our suburb remains wooded in many areas.

Incidentally, our most recent newsletter from our electric utility, which I, coincidentally, had read reclining on our couch the day before the storm, states on page one, first bullet point: “Have a plan for what you will do during outages if you and your family or business are dependent on power.”  I found this sentence humorous.  “If your family or business are dependent on power?”  Not only because it should be “if your family or business is dependent on power” but because of the obvious question: What family or business isn’t dependent on power?   Maybe in rural areas in other countries, but in a suburb of Seattle?

Kind of reminds me of two houses in our neighborhood that I suspect use firewood for heat.  Their wood is stacked as tall as me, maybe taller, and I’m 5’10.  Our fireplace is the size of a small room.  It has two openings, one in the living room and one in the kitchen.  Maybe they did intend it for heat, or to cook with in the kitchen?  I’m giddy from all our home’s and neighborhood’s idiosyncracy.

I still think it’s more romantic to live “in the woods,” but while at one point I thought it was romantic to lose power, what really stinks (pun intended) is not being able to take a shower because there is no hot water.  (I’m still a city girl!)  Now that I bought $200 worth of food last week, what really would have stunk and hurt our wallet would have been to  lose it in the fridge if the power didn’t come back on.

Ah… but my mind leans toward the adventure in this situation, not the reality of people losing their perishables, property, and lives.