ADVENTURE IN THE OUTBACK

Okay, not really. But Adventure in the Midwest just doesn't have the same ring.

Today is Friday. One week ago, last Friday night, we were hit with an ice storm. About 75,000 "homes and businesses" in town lost electricity, including us. We were out for three days--power came back on Monday night. Some people still don't have power, including my mother, who is staying at my grandmother's apartment.

It's an odd thing when everyone's power goes out at once. It reminded me of New Orleans after the floods--the streets LOOKED deserted, although I knew they weren't.

The first two nights, it was raining and ice was freezing on the trees. I went outside several times during the night to check on things. Shivering in bare feet and pajamas on the back porch, any time of the night, I'd wait no more than a couple of minutes and would hear booms and cracks--like distant gunfire--as the tree branches snapped. Sirens wailed more or less constantly.

Luckily, it didn't get too cold the days we were without power. It must have been hovering right around freezing, because although the trees were coated with ice and branches were falling right and left, the streets were wet but not slick. People could drive around, as long as they either stuck to main streets which had been cleared, or were willing to back up when encountering branches or downed power lines blocking the roads.

Monday night it did get cold, down in the single digits, and the people without power started to get a bit frazzled and cranky. It seems to get to people more and more the longer they are out of routine. They're spending all their time checking the stores for kerosene bottles, layering blankets on the kids, or figuring out what to eat and what to wear without electricity to cook with or a washing machine to run.

Wal-Mart had conspicuous empty shelves--bottled water, sections of non-perishable food. For some reason, the meat department had lots of empty shelves. My husband's theory on that is that people can cook on their outdoor gas grills, so the meat sold out. Gas and kerosene for camping stoves and heaters sold out as soon as shipments arrived, of course.

And no school. The kids had two whole weeks off for "Winter Break" this year. They'd just been back for a week when we got the ice storm, and school was canceled for this whole week and for Monday (that was scheduled to be off for teacher's meetings anyway). So they've been home for another week. Sigh. Eleven schools in town still don't have power, plus some of them have other problems like branches or dangerous power line situations. I just hope they really will have school on Tuesday. There's been mention of housing some of the schools in other buildings, like churches, for a short time.

There's another storm scheduled for tomorrow. I hope this time it's just snow.