Chapter 26 - Early Morning

             It is early in the morning for me, and only 7:15.  I have been awake since before five, but just lay in bed for a time, listening to the birds and the traffic building on the roadway.  I did manage to get a good sighting of the early morning sun, so now I am sure which direction is which in this house.  It is faced almost directly south west.  That was a very bad direction in Kelowna, but if seems to work fine here.

             The lights went out while I was starting to cook supper last evening, about quarter to five.  I tried to turn on my little stove light and I thought the bulb was blown.  That was short work for that bulb, so I went to the cupboard to find the spare.  I put in the spare bulb, and we finally came to the conclusion that the electricity was off.  We checked the breaker circuits, and they seemed to be in place.  I asked Melaney to walk over to John’s place next door with Gigi, and check to see if his lights were out.  He said his were all right, he was watching some program on his computer.  Mel suggested he might be on battery, which he was, and when he checked, sure enough, that was the case.  With both the houses without lights, we knew it was a general outage.  We phoned into town to Rita, and asked about her lights.  They were on, so the difficulty was local. 

            I didn’t like this situation much. It is Sunday, and who knows when anyone will be able to work on the problem. There was nothing that could be done except a plan to get some candles the next trip to town.  I thought of Mel’s emergency light in the back of the car, and she went out to get that.

            I made cold sandwiches for our dinner, and we prepared to while the evening away doing nothing.  In a short time though, the lights came back on.  The computers were charging and the SKY television was recycling.  The kettles on the stove started their little bell tinkle in the lids and the dinner was cooking.  I had planned on fish sticks, but hadn’t taken them out of the freezer.  That was one thing that concerned me; if the power outage was too long, would the freezer hold.  I do have a two litre container block of solid ice in there, so that would have held for a while.

            In the meantime, the fire under the kettles was reduced to a simmer and potatoes and green beans went on cooking.  That is dinner prepared for tonight.  I cook a large pot of green beans and after the meal of hot beans, I chill the remainder and use them in salad.  Yummy!  I do like my beans.

            One more little klink fixed. If we could just fix the matter of mosquito bites for Melaney.  She walks the dog and they just attack her.  She made one hike almost down to the river one day and she came home with lumps everywhere that she wasn’t covered.  She won’t go back that way.  The green growth is very high and the insects thrive.  We keep vinegar handy to try to stem the itch, but she is really uncomfortable.  She even had one bite on the top of her ear.