Friday night, storms blew through Our Nation's Capital and knocked out power to pretty much everyone. Our electric company services about 830,000 customers in Northern Virginia and was reporting outages to about 350,000 of those customers on Saturday. The District of Columbia and Suburban Maryland face a similar situation with about 350,000 outages. Heading south, the power is on in Fredericksburg, but not in Woodbridge, at least as of yesterday.
By the way, did I mention we're in a heat wave? It was 104 on Friday, 98 yesterday, 94-97 expected today. I hate hot weather and I know I'm quite a wuss about it, but 104 is fucking hot. It's so humid you can actually smell it. That's right. Humidity has an actual not-unpleasant odor. Kind of green and sweet.
We slept at home Friday night. Once the storms passed, there was some cooler air behind it and it was reasonably comfortable, although I had to sleep without my medical device, which meant I slept in 45 second increments for about 3 hours. Our first thought was to check for outage updates. There was no telephone connection, either on the cell or the land line. There was no internet because I used up the battery powering one of my medical devices. OK then. Let's just assume the power will not be restored on Saturday. Plan: Board the dog at the vet and move into a hotel. No problem.
We couldn't call the vet, so we drove there. No power at the vet. The size of the issue was beginning to occur to us. We couldn't get home on the back roads because of downed trees and power lines. We turned on the radio and learned, oh! it's the entire National Capital Region. They were listing hotels with vacancies and gas stations with power, the assumption being that everything was closed unless they were on the list. There is no way we're finding a hotel that accepts dogs and has a room.
Ponder ponder ponder.
I can't stay here. I need refrigeration for my insulin and electricity to run my medical device. Plus, I can't have Tiki suffering. If I'm hot and miserable for the foreseeable future, I am going to be irritable like woah and Mr. D and I are having trouble getting along when conditions are good. One of is going to die if we don't get out of here.
Let's go stay with my parents! Oh, wait. They're on vacation. If they were home, we'd be welcome. Well. At least we won't be in their hair while we're there. I have a key, and I am invoking familial privilege. I've been a good girl my entire life. They've never had to get me out of jail, send me to rehab, buy me out of a bad marriage, rescue me from a cult, take care of my neglected offspring, or pay off my debts so I don't get foreclosed on. I got good grades and turned out to be responsible and conscientious and law-abiding and the biggest source of aggravation for my parents is my wiseassery and disrespect, which has been a problem ever since I learned to speak, as my mother will be happy to remind you.
And so, we threw some stuff in duffel bags, put Tiki's crate in the back seat, and headed down to the boonies outside Richmond to invade my parents' house without permission. It was not an easy trip. It turns out that everyone else was fleeing as well. Twenty miles south of town, we had to hunt for a gas station that had power and then we had to wait almost 30 minutes for our turn to fill up. So, on the road: hot, dirty, sweaty, smelly, no caffeine, no food, no insulin (for me), traffic at a virtual standstill from the big outlet mall at Potomac Mills to the Rappahannock River, Mr. D hating my guts, me hating Mr. D's guts, trying to come up with a story to tell the cops when the neighbors summon them to my parents' house to investigate burglars/squatters, worrying because Tiki won't drink any water, and feeling guilty because I don't have permission to be at my parents' house in the first place (and I wouldn't want them invading my house without permission).
At last we arrive. My parents have shut the house down while they are gone, which we discover in increments as we attempt to settle in and get squared away. We can't unload through the garage because the garage door won't open. I'm not sure why, but there is probably some sort of security device. The indoor temp is 86 downstairs, so we turn on all the ceiling fans we can find and fiddle with the thermostat. The upstairs thermostat is completely dark. After multiple attempts to get it going, including using the same sequence of button-punching that seemed to work downstairs, I give up. Mr. D tries again a while later and manages to get it going, although he couldn't tell you what he did to make that happen. Tiki is patrolling the baseboards of the house for ant traps, which to him are delicious chew toys, so we have to keep watching him to make sure he doesn't eat ant poison. Also, we are up and down the stairs trying to make things work, and Tiki follows us everywhere. Those steps are slippery and steep and Tiki can't negotiate them by himself anymore. He gets halfway down and then he stops and cries, so he follows us up, but we have to carry him down. Repeatedly. Because he follows us everywhere. We can't get an internet connection because what we think is a modem is actually an external hard drive. The A/C isn't really working. And that's when I notice that there is no coffeemaker to be found. WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED TO THE COFFEEMAKER!?! WHAT KIND OF BARBARIANS ARE THESE PEOPLE!!!!??! I am about to fall apart, so I take a nap.
When I wake up, Mr. D tells me that there is no more water. The pump that supplies water to the house from the well is off, which we discover when we finish drinking all of the water left in the pipes and the taps stop working. Mr. D has called around looking for a hotel room, and every hotel in the area is sold out. We Are Screwed.
The nap has restored just enough brain function to think Hey! What if I check the circuit breakers?! So I do. The breakers are off for the "upstairs outside unit," the "downstairs outside unit," and the "well pump." I flip the switches and then go check the taps. Water is acquired. "I swear there was no water a minute ago" sez Mr. D. I don't doubt it. The nap helped a little, but I still hate his guts and still can't cope so I announce: I Am Taking A Shower. And I do. A nice cool one. And then I put on clean, dry clothing. And then I sit under a ceiling fan and knit for a while while he gets cleaned up. And while I am sitting there in the den/office/whatever they call it, I think Hmmm. I wonder what's in here? And it turns out to be a master panel with clearly labeled power buttons for all of my parents' computer stuff, so I turn things on and VOILA! We have internet.
I am filled with a sense of.... I'm not sure what. I suppose that the shower calmed me down and discovering the power button to the computer made me feel like it was possible that I was not going to die either from heat and deprivation or during a fight with the spouse. Not relief, exactly, just a lifting of the drama.
Then Mr. D came down, and he was calmer too, and we decided that the A/C was starting to work, so we took inventory. We have A/C and ceiling fans. We have water. We have electricity, which means my medical situ is squared away. We have iPods. We have my laptop and my parents's Dell (but not their iMac, which doesn't seem to have a power switch). I have knitting. He has books. My parents have a zillion other books, at least a few of which are bound to appeal if we need more books. I know where the grocery store is, I know where the Starbucks is, and I am OK with suspending the vegan thing for a few days if it'll save some drama. All is well. We are going to be OK. Plus, unless we get in the car and drive to North Carolina, we've got nowhere else to go anyway. We decide to stay. We try to watch some TV, but there are three remotes and no cable and the best we can get is white noise at about 70 decibels, so we decide that the TV situ is fucked and we will do without.
Now it's Sunday morning. Tiki is moving back and forth between the sunny spots and the cool spots, just like at home. Mr. D is surfing for power outage and weather updates. I am knitting, drinking the best coffee I've had in two days, and writing away. It looks like we will be here for a few more days. I call home occasionally to see if the answering machine comes on (cos that's how I know the power is back). I've got meds to last for three more days. We are well-supplied and know how/where to restock. I'm a little worried about missing the Tour de France and the Euro final, but as long as we have internet, we'll be OK with that.
At this point, I'm thinking about how we can leave the house without trashing it. We don't want to leave behind anything to rot in the fridge or the garbage. We can't leave the thermostat where it is (I don't think my parents have ever had the A/C set this low in their life). Should I turn the breakers for the pump and the A/C back off? I can't remember all the unplugged stuff that we plugged in so I don't remember what I need to unplug. Oh, and then there's the ant traps that we've had to pick up. And sheets and towels. And we brought up dog equipment from the basement that we have to put away. It's inconsiderate enough to be squatters. I don't want to be a pig as well. Well, there's part of me that says that Princess Dirtbunny has been inconvenienced enough and I will be as much of a pig as I damn well please, but that isn't fair to my parents, so I know I'll come around when it's time.
The End
So my boyfriend Fabian Cancellara started today's leg of the Tour de France in the Maillot Jaune and could potentially keep it for a week or so, and its La Furia Roja against gli Azzurri this afternoon, so Andiamo!
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