As I sit here typing, the first drops of freezing rain have just began falling in Decatur.  I hope that the ice storm doesn’t amount to much, but this time I’m more prepared than I was a couple years ago.  I thought I’d share some tips and lessons I learned while surviving five days without electricity in the dead of winter.

Ice Storm Lessons:

1. We stayed at my in-laws house during the power outage but I went back to my house three times a day to take care of my dogs and to try to warm the house up with the stove.  What I learned is – don’t boil water in a 35 degree house! It worked well enough in heating the house; I even got it up to 80 degrees, but I also created atmospheric conditions ripe for thunderstorm development.  The warm front sweeping down from the kitchen meeting up with the cold front in the living room produced condensation – in other words rain!

The condensation on the cold walls didn’t work out too well either.  The paint began oozing out brown residue that dripped down the entire length of the walls and beaded up on the ceilings.  When I first discovered it, I wondered for a moment if the house had suddenly become possessed.  I still remember mopping the ceiling by candlelight!  Somehow the oil came out of the paint leaving behind dry, brittle flakes on my walls.  The framed pictures didn’t fair too well either.  Family photographs are now permanently attached to the glass that they were behind.

2. Carbon monoxide is trippy! I’m not sure heating the house with the stove is a wise idea but I really had no other choice.  I remember feeling light-headed and nauseous at the end of each warming session.  I was never really sure if my physical symptoms were due to the fumes, or the realization I was going to have to spend another night with my in-laws, but the effect seems to be pretty much the same!

3. Barking flashlights aren’t the best choice in an emergency! I wasn’t at all prepared for the ice storm, and I’m a worrier by nature, so I don’t know what I was thinking, but I had no extra batteries on hand and only a half-full box of matches, that I had left outside in the rain by the barbecue grill earlier that Spring.  The only flashlight that worked was my daughters Fisher-Price barking dog flashlight.  Every time I turned the light on, it barked but only stayed on for about 30 seconds before automatically shutting off.  Until I managed to get a candle lit, it was a repetitive, ” Arf, Arf, Arf”, then the flashlight turned on and then it went dark again…then “Arf, Arf, Arf”, there was light again!

4. Scented Candles Stink! I had an assortment of candles in my house, that had been given to me as gifts from various people through the years that I had never used.  They really are lovely to look at but lighting all of them at the same time produced a noxious odor consisting of pine trees, vanilla, cinnamon, and ocean breeze (whatever an ocean breeze is supposed to smell like), and the combination was not pleasant.  I learned I’m highly allergic to scented candles.  One whiff and I had a splitting headache.  The sulfur dioxide of lighting matches throughout the day didn’t help either. The lesson learned – have plenty of unscented candles and lighters to light them!

5. Don’t trust your husband with any chore. I had sent my husband and father-in-law to the house to rescue the meat in our freezer.  He brought back a cooler full of meat but I later discovered, with my nose, that he didn’t completely empty the refrigerator.  Every time I went back to the house, I was greeted with the smell of rotten death.  I thought it was the dogs who had taken over the couches and living room but no dog, living anyway, could smell that bad.  Melted ice cream, tater tots, and rotting, decaying, freezer burnt meat were stinking it up good in the freezer!  There was a party going on in there of the bacterial and fungal kind!  It was awful, and of course, I was the one who had to clean it up while my husband was resting at work!

Well, the rain is really coming down now and I better get the dishes washed and everything in order before the lights go out!  Take care.