Power-Less and Photo-Less

Apparently, I have run out of free photo storage and had to purchase some more today. And I thought blogger kept bragging about being FREE!! Since the timing was lousy – right in the middle of my Swedish Christmas musings - I hurried up and purchased some more space for $5.00. They said it may take up to 24 hours for this to become effective. So here is what happened yesterday sans the photos.

Yesterday, the rain continued, but I had to get the mail so I hiked down to the mail box. It was wonderful to walk in the rain. As I approached the mailboxes on the main road, I heard a roaring sound. Thinking it was one of the donkey rescue trucks, I looked behind me, but no truck in sight. Then I knew what it was: The creek! At one point it goes under the road through two large drums and that's where the sound came from. In the five years we have owned this place, I have only once or twice seen a trickle of water in that creek. Yesterday it was roaring, coming through the drums with a huge force and whitecaps on brown water.

And the sound…..It was wonderful…I just stood there….for a long, long time…. and listened. If you come from a country of many lakes, if you spent your childhood summers on an island or lived on a boat, if you owned a sailboat and used to sail to Catalina Island off the California coast, much as you may love the desert mountains, you will miss the sound of water because it was such a huge part of your life.

Earlier, around ten in the morning, as I was about to start baking, the power went and it didn't come back all day. So I had to get busy and make a fire. I had some wood in the house and I brought in as much of the relatively dry wood from the side of the house as I could carry.

And for the first time, I was able to make hot water for tea on my woodburning stove.

With nothing much to do, I decided to light candles, wrap presents and make my Christmas baskets.

  

At dinner time, I was thrilled to once again make lemonade of lemons: Since I couldn't heat my dinner or cook, I reveled in a salty, a very salty, dinner of Swedish Matjes herring with sour cream and Triskets. I love salt, but like all of us old folks, I have to limit it. Not so last night. To keep dinner a little bit healthy, I had an orange for dessert.

As the day wore on and dusk fell, the power didn't come back, so I lit more candles and just sat and watched as it grew dark outside, something I never do when I have electric service – how come, I wonder, it was a wonderful experience. I listened to the rain, stoked the fire, made sure Pippi Birdie was covered up with extra layers so he would stay safe through the night, and went to bed. I have a wonderful duvet, called a featherbed, like those in Austria and Switzerland; it's huge and thick and there is no way you can be cold snuggling under it. Angel was shivering, so I made sure she came up and spent the night in bed with me. It was early, around six. I read for a while with my flashlight then went to sleep. The power came on around five this morning. My phone answering machine alerted with it's 'please set the time' message, waking us all up. I was happy to be able to turn on the electric heaters and make some hot coffee.

The rain stopped this morning. I hope it will be nice tomorrow as I have to go to the dentist early. Have a nice evening and thank you for all your comments on Angel and Samson. You know they love the attention.