Sweet home Alabama

What a strange seven days here in North Alabama. Most of you know that our state (and much of the South) endured the powerful force of hundreds of tornadoes last Wednesday. Whole neighborhoods and communities have been completely wiped away from the Alabama landscape. The storms did not hit our home directly, but did hit many places in our community, particularly several miles north of where we live. I have only seen small parts of the destruction (the worst affected areas are closed to traffic), but what I have seen has reminded me that the forces of nature (and indeed of God himself) are stronger, more powerful, and more mysterious than we can even understand.

 

We are so thankful all we had to endure was a lengthy loss of electricity in our home. As you will see below, I actually enjoyed it, but in no way do I mean that I enjoyed the reason for the power outage. It was nice to be without power for a spell, but I don't mean at all that I'm glad for the storms. 

 

All told, we spend 104 hours in our home without power. This is a small inconvenience, when you consider those who lost so much more than power. I have included a few photos . . . in case you were wondering how you fill five days without power.

A few comments about living without power . . .

Many of our friends left town and were even kind enough to offer their parents' homes for us to come stay in. While I know that would have been great and was greatly appreciated, I'm so glad we made the choice to stay and "tough it out." We had almost a week of time together. Time to walk the dogs, play with C, plan complicated meals, discover all the things in our freezer and pantry long forgotten, play games, read books...many things we opt not to do when the options of tv and internet are available. Without power, so much of the pressure to "get stuff done" was lifted. No work for Russell, no tutoring for me, no laundry, minimal cleaning, no blogging, no facebooking, nothing. Just hours to fill. The dogs are definitely spoiled now, after days of way too much attention and way too many rounds of fetch. We met neighbors we hadn't met before. People were out in their yards, on their porches, talking to each other. Smiling. Sharing food. Offering resources. Making the best of it. (Not to mention the thousands who have already volunteered to help clear debris, house the homeless, feed the displaced, etc . . . there has been a remarkable outpouring of goodwill and neighborly love in our community.) It was wonderful. What a great couple of days. We even had a beautiful (mostly) acoustic church service Sunday.

There were a few things we missed. The hot water heater. The vacuum cleaner (you would too if you shared a house with Bandit for a week...) The washing machine. But really, the list ends there for me. Doing dishes by hand was just fine (what other pressing matter did I have?), the loss of TV and internet was not much of a sacrifice, and even indoor lighting was only missed a little bit. I am glad that we won't have to worry again for quite some time about where and when we might find ice, gas, refrigerated foods, etc. Thankful for and reminded of our usual abundance we take for granted.

So we are grateful to have had the experience and so thankful that our friends and family are safe. We are looking for ways now to help Alabama rebuild and help people piece back together their homes and their lives.

I was in the middle of laundry when the power went out. We hung out the contents of the washing machine to dry in the dining room!

We grilled this frozen pizza after it had thawed in our "freezer." Um, it was really charred. We scraped the cheese off and ate it.

Other than the incident with the pizza, we really ate like kings, trying to keep all the best contents of the freezer from going to waste. Our dinner Friday night was steak, mashed potatoes (made on the side burner of the grill), and corn on the cob. Thank you Publix, for putting that on sale the week before the storm!

After the first 36 hours or so, we got cell phone coverage back. It was tough to keep the phones charged, since we had one car charger that took about five times as long as a wall charger. We were glad to have a connection with the outside world, though. We learned about Bin Laden via text message. After dark each night, we played games and read by candlelight and flashlight.

So thankful toys operate on BATTERIES!! I don't think C ever even knew anything was different. It was just one big party with daddy home every day and nothing to do but play, eat, and take naps. Which is pretty much life everyday when you are a six-month-old. Another note - she is pretty much sitting up now! Wow!

She holds the book along with you. Love it. See, the best things in life don't require a single watt.