Wednesday, July 15, 2015

29 Things You Can NOT Do When You Lose Power

lose power list3

This post was originally going to be called “29 Things to Do When you Lose Power”. But then I got to thinking, people don’t lose power half as much as we do. In fact, it happens so often that people get confused and think that they’re read the post before. Maybe you’re thinking the same thing.

The post you might be thinking about could be when we lost internet (here, here or the 100 times that we didn’t blog about it) or perhaps the one where we lost power three times in one month when we were in Mexico this year or the other time that we blogged about it here. I can totally see why you might get them all mixed up.

Unfortunately, I’m not referring to any of those other times but today when suddenly, with only one solitary fan and light running, the house went quiet. Since I couldn’t do ANYTHING (read below for proof), we went over to the neighbours to make sure that the Power company (herein referred to as HydroOne) knew about the plight of our neighbourhood. The only problem was that our neighbours had electricity.

When I got home, I managed to find working batteries to put in our emergency flashlights (we have tons of spares after that little “Cake, Cookie, Whatever Debacle”), and I made my way downstairs to check the breakers. After staring at “what I have no idea” for a few minutes, I decided that none of the breakers were tripped. And so I headed outside to the meter. Truth be told, I didn’t get great grades in High School Science but even with only 53% knowledge of all things electrical I knew that the meter shouldn’t be blank. Completely and totally blank.

So back to my neighbours house I went. You know the one where “Uncle Mike” who works for HydroOne lives. Unfortunately, Uncle Mike is on vacation so I did what any other person would do (including him) and called their support line. They asked me the usual questions and then needed a phone number where they could call me with questions and updates. Um. I don’t have electricity so therefore I don’t have a telephone and Ed was in Ottawa on business so I didn’t have a cell phone. The call ended with me feeling like I was waiting for the cable repair guy with an ETA of sometime before my 44nd birthday or the next leap year (whichever is later).

Turns out that I had nothing to worry about because within 30 minutes of placing my call, the truck showed up! The workers first question was “So, what did you do?” in a joking tone and of course I professed my innocence. Since they were the joking kind, I didn’t pay much attention when the guy said “Oh no, that’s not good” followed shortly by “and that’s serious too”. I did a little laugh-choke-cough and had him assure me that he was kidding. He wasn’t.

lose power list2

After a little bit of this and a whole lot of that, and with the help of a big long pole, they managed to replace the breaker on the pole outside our house and resolve our electricity problem. To top it off, they made it look easy.

To make a long story short, we were without power for three hours and it was horrible (First World Problems). And now back to the whole point of this post…

29 Things you Can NOT Do When you Lose Power (in no particular order)

  1. Write this list (unless of course you have something called a “pen and paper”, whatever that is),
  2. Run the Air conditioning,
  3. Run Fans (I was so wishing that I had a Dyson but apparently they use electricity too),
  4. Run anything that will take the edge off the fact that your house is 85 degrees inside (because yes, unfortunately you know what the temperature is because the thermostat has a battery backup. Karma),
  5. Cooking anything (because of course you’d want to when the house is 85 degrees, forget the fact that you don’t have anything for dinner),
  6. Keep the ice cream cold (speaking of dinner),
  7. Call the Power Company to let them know that your power is out (if you immediately think “Use your Cell phone, see #8),
  8. Use your Cell phone because the battery is dead and you can’t charge it,
  9. Send that urgent email that the person you just messaged is waiting for,
  10. Get your automatic garage door open so that you can go somewhere to do any of the above,
  11. Fry an egg (I did that once…),
  12. Bake Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins (check out this tasty recipe!),
  13. Make a Beet Green, Kale and Swiss Chard smoothie using ingredients from your garden (Note that I wouldn’t even make this even if I did have power)
  14. Watch episodes of “Extreme Couponers” on YouTube (If you like coupons, you should enter my $90 Coupon Giveaway on right now, P.S. Did you know that Extreme Couponing is coming to Canada!).
  15. Make robot voices in the fan when no ones listening (it’s okay, we all do it),
  16. Plug in your Christmas lights (like we did every quarter for six years. No, we’re not lying…
  17. Train for the zombie apocalypse on the treadmill,
  18. Use your Foot Spa (don’t knock it until you try it),
  19. Check your Mousetraps (happens in the best of families),
  20. Charge your light sabre, (you’d be surprised at how convenient those things are),
  21. Use your Clapper (weren’t they the coolest!),
  22. Heat your water bed (do people still have those things?)
  23. Make ice,
  24. Take your blood pressure,
  25. Workout to Richard Simmons,
  26. Shred paper,
  27. Check Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, Tinder… (the horror!),
  28. Weld,
  29. Have your friends help you come up with 29 things that you can’t do when you lose power because you read somewhere that lists should have 29 items.

See what a travesty it is to lose power? The next time you see your electricity meter, maybe give it a little hug and let it know how much you appreciate it. Can’t hurt.

What Would You Miss if you Lost Power?

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39 thoughts on “29 Things You Can NOT Do When You Lose Power”

  1. Terra Heck

    What ironic timing for this post! We are actually without power in my home right now due to bad storms. So are over 1500 other people. Have been for almost two days now. And it’s hotter than the seventh level of hell. Luckily, someone loaned us a generator. Unluckily, it only powers our fridge and one fan.
    Terra Heck recently posted…Emma’s Officially A Teenager!My Profile

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  2. Soozle

    We have had some really bad storms pass through in the past few weeks; some that have knocked out power. One such power outage occurred at night – meaning not only could I do nothing I wanted to but I was also sitting in the dark with no flashlight. Yup – that sucked 😉

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  7. Sandy

    Awesome list, Sarah! I especially loved #29 – it made me literally laugh out loud. Then there is #15! Hehehe! Glad you weren’t without power for too long 🙂

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  8. Laurie P

    I am lucky enough to have a generator now…..so I can at least keep my fridge running, or microwave….but only one thing at a time plus a coffee maker. YES COFFEE! or a fan…… but COFFEE!!

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  9. Christy Maurer

    You can totally shred paper! You just have to use your hands 🙂 And ice cream for dinner is always a good idea. And apparently the cool people now have these things that charge your phone even when you’re without electricity…but we, being uncool, do not have those. Nor do I have a phone that would take one if I were cool…because I’m so uncool I have a nonSmart phone.
    Christy Maurer recently posted…Sunday Strolls Giveaway Linky 7/19My Profile

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  11. Carla

    I literally just choked on my apple when I got to the Kale and swiss chard smoothie part! You are the best!!! Love this post 🙂 Glad you have power again and welcome back to the online world 🙂

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  12. Susan Patterson

    So many people depend on land line phones still and if you have no power, your cordless phone will not work! Only rotary type old phones will work!

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  14. kyooty/Mary

    funny story ,you can though go swipe all the mini led moon lights from your yard and use them for fairy lighting if you don’t have batteries for flashlights. Also putting them infront of mirrors makes for more light.

    Reply ↓
          1. kyooty/Mary

            definitely eat the ice cream and the whipping cream too in the can. Also save the sour milk for making chocolate cakes when the power returns, and for when you buy more ice cream for the cake.

            The moon lights are solar powered for the most part and available at the $ rama or GT 😛
            kyooty/Mary recently posted…Happy Birthday Countries!!!My Profile

  16. mrdisco

    7 is not entirely true. landlines run off of their own low voltage line which is what makes them so invaluable.

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  17. Elizabeth Matthiesen

    Loved every bit of this – yet again. Sorry you lost power but if this was the result it was worth it 🙂 I am a bit worried that you might manage to electrocute yourself though, I’ve never heard of taking your blood pressure needed electricity. You just need a stethoscope; a blood pressure cuff and a blood pressure measuring instrument don’t you?

    Reply ↓
    1. Sarah Post author

      Dear Elizabeth,

      With respect to #24, you are totally right! In fact, we have a manual blood pressure machine so I should have known that. Thanks for clarifying. Instead, #24 should read…

      “Causes you to have momentary (or longer) periods of confusion where you think that a manual blood pressure machine needs electricity to function when really it doesn’t”.

      Besos Sarah.
      Sarah recently posted…Eight Things You’ll Need For An Authentic Farm Hoedown (a.k.a. Party)My Profile

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