I Need Your Body Heat To Keep Me Warm

Remember how Foghorn Leghorn was always telling that stupid old hen that he needed her love to keep him warm? Yeah. Me too. Just wandering. Anyway.....

The electricity went out at some point after we went to bed Thursday night. I woke up with Baby Snorty Wonk at about 4AM and discovered the situation. I, of course, roused Michael from his dead sleep after locating him beneath the 40 layers of covers we were employing anyway and we began the process of reporting the outage and figuring out how to manage for a bit. A bit...... lol..... we are such naive optimists; I think it is the small town mentality that we still break out on occasion that made us believe they'd fix it lickety split. We really thought there was no way they would leave people turned off during that kind of weather because things like that just don't happen, kwim? Ha. Stupid, stupid us.

Friday was our first real experience of bitter cold although it was just a taste of things to come as the house retained some heat still from the days before. The kids played out in the snow with Langdon seeing his first snow ever (click the link to see some pics) and we eventually wandered out and about to locate some food. Because McDonalds have power and everyone knows the Golden Arches take precedence over residential neighborhoods when it comes to restoring heat. Absolutely everyone knows that.

From there on out it was a waiting game. We spent the nights in the kitchen we had managed to semi-close off, huddled around the gas stove, playing cards by candlelight, sleeping 7 to a bed and watching the temperature in the rest of the house drop so low the thermostat wasn't able to measure it anymore. The lady down the street says her house bottomed out at 22 degrees or so and I would say we matched that if not bettered it as we are on the third floor and have huge windows to boot. We spent the days store hopping attempting to keep warm. We would stay as long as we could until the store owners became suspicious we were just there for heat and then we had to move on. We managed to finish our Christmas shopping, although in retrospect we probably shouldn't have done it when we were so cold because we bought everyone very strange things. Things cold people want but people with furnaces have no real need for. But I digress..............

Tuesday I had finally had enough when it came to Dexter's snort snort oink oink wonk wonk snort snick wonk wheeze oink condition that still had no final diagnosis and so I did one of the hardest things to date and confronted his pediatrician. Now anyone that knows me can imagine how difficult this was as I am more likely to respond with a bad joke if you cut my leg off then get angry, and so going in to pick a fight with an MD wasn't exactly my speed. Luckily I didn't have to do anything too terribly offensive. I called her out and made her listen to him and hold him. As soon as she realized how bad it was she had us in with a specialist within the hour and we recieved a profuse formal apology. Which was nice. Unnecessary, but nice. Anyway, I'll post the baby stuff on a later post, but suffice it to say we ended up having to travel to another town within an hour to see that specialist and once there he said that he was not comfortable dealing with this situation and referred us on to another specialist. We got some answers at the last stop, although it is all still in process a bit.

Finally on Wednesday power was restored. I cannot even describe to you the mayhem that ensued with the kids once they realized what had happened. It's a good thing it came on when it did as Summer had become exceedingly pissed at the situation and had decided to write obscene letters to our electric company; especially when we recieved our monthly bill after no lights or heat for 5 days. I had decided to let her as long as her grammar and spelling were correct.

I think it was a growing experience for our family. Spending so much time in the dark reminded me that I had strayed away from my very reasons for choosing to homeschool in the first place, and I spent many hours scribbling in the dark the beginnings of the return to our core academic theories and beliefs. The entire family finally bore witness to the long nights of apnea fits, constant feedings, and continuous wonking that I go through with Dexter and they became much more understanding of my exhaustion, although they gave him some very questionable nicknames as well. Michael broke out his everyday ingenuity and kept us in lights and heat through the ordeal; it was nice to see this as sometimes it seems he surrenders his everyday common sense in exchange for scientific prowess. Scientific prowess is an admirable thing and has been known to cure disease, however it doesn't fix the sink. Unless the sink has a disease.