I love storms, but not when they deprive me of my creature comforts...

I love storms, but not when they deprive me of my creature comforts…

I was going to post something on the blog last weekend – honestly, I was! I sat down on Saturday afternoon with my laptop on the couch in our lounge room and was trying to decide which of my many subjects I should wax lyrical about… then the power shut off.

At first, I thought “fair enough, there’s a lot of wind outside and it’s raining, so perhaps they’re afraid it might take down a line and become dangerous.” Four hours later, the wind and rain had died down hours ago and the power still hadn’t been turned back on. I wasn’t quite so laid-back anymore. The rain had only made the air hotter and muggier and with no air conditioning, it was becoming intolerable. Just sitting still was making me sweat… I was afraid to open the fridge in case all the cold air escaped and all our food went bad!

As it turned out, a branch had fallen on a power line in our street. All I could think was that they had better hurry up and fix it before I melted away…

By this time, it was about 6pm, so my hubby and I decided to go to the mining town 20 minutes away and get dinner, figuring that by the time we got back, they would have sorted the problem and we’d have cool air conditioning and unspoiled food. I think everyone else had the same idea – the pub was packed! It took us over an hour to get our food, but we kind of didn’t really care, we were too busy revelling in the wonders of air conditioning!

We arrived back at the community at around 9:30 and were overjoyed to see lights on in the houses. Power had been restored! We were saved! Or so we thought… Our spirits plummeted once we reached our street. It was the only one in complete darkness. No lights, nothing. Just the stifling, hot night air. Just our luck.

After cold showers (thank goodness the water was still working!) we lay in bed and tried to sleep. All our windows were open (inviting all sorts of bugs to come inside, yay…) but there was no wind. We tossed and turned and tried to sleep for almost two hours, all in vain. Neither of us tolerate heat very well, so this was turning out to be a nightmare. Eventually, we decided to head across the road to the Aged Care Centre where my husband works. Their power had been restored, so we knew there would be air conditioning. We grabbed a couple of pillows, our iPads and the PS3 – if we couldn’t sleep, we may as well use the time productively and log some gaming hours!

We played until 3:30am before finally conking out in the reclining chairs. It certainly wasn’t my most comfortable night ever, but it was infinitely better than trying to sleep in the heat. I don’t know how us humans survived without the wonders of air conditioning! I guess we were sensible enough to live in areas that were cooler!

Anyway, the power wasn’t returned to our street until 6pm that Sunday, so it had been out for a total of 28 hours… We had to transport all of our perishable foods to the fridges and freezers at the Aged Care that morning because it was all melting and starting to go warm. On top of that, we were tired from lack of sleep (partly our own faults for insisting on playing games until the wee hours…) and annoyed at the power company for taking so long to fix it. You get all that when you live on a remote community! It’s one of those things you have to put up with – along with millions of those pesky flies!