Yesterday was one of my busy days. The August issue of Horizons Magazine was delivered, so I spent the morning getting it in the mail. Tropical Storm Bonnie was off the coast, so it was a really windy day. At the loading dock in the downtown Melbourne, FL main post office, carts were rolling and stuff was flying. Even my hair; my hair band broke about 10:00am and I didn’t have a spare with me. By the time I left the post office, I just wanted to go home and relax. I stopped by Walmart on the way home and got some large plastic storage containers – I’ve been organizing my laundry room and pantry area. I also stopped at Publix and got a Caribbean chicken leg quarter for lunch – score! I had lunch and then began putting things in the storage containers. I bought the perfect size to fit all the paper bags, and the perfect size to store my dozens of cleaning cloths. I don’t use paper towels to clean, I keep a couple of dozen old wash cloths handy and use them to clean and wipe up spills. After I use them, I toss into a plastic shoebox next to the dryer and when it’s full I wash them all at once. It’s saved me a fortune in paper towels and there’s no unnecessary paper waste. By 2:00pm, the area was clean and organized, so I took a shower and washed my hair and sat back in the big puffy chair to relax and see if anything good was on tv. Then the power went out.
The power goes out in Palm Bay, FL fairly often, mostly just a flicker or maybe a few minutes. After 15 minutes, I called FPL’s 1-800-4OUTAGE (800-468-8243) just to make sure they got the 3 calls they needed in order to have an outage checked. I love FPL having this call number. The recording told me they had identified an outage in this area affecting 67 people and that power should be restored within 2 hours.
No power meant no internet access – and also no water since I am on a well. I was glad I’d had my shower. I wandered through the house and opened all the blinds to let the light stream in. I collected all the flashlights and changed the batteries in them. I saw I had two unopened packages of D batteries that were dated March 2006, so I checked the expiration dates on all the batteries. Check here to compare which flashlight batteries last the longest.
Before organization
After organization
Having replaced the flashlight batteries and taken inventory of my battery stash, I look around for other things I could do with no power. I’d cleaned the house earlier. My laundry room organization was done. I glanced at my To Do List. If I’d printed out my subscription labels, I could do those, but I’d not yet printed it out. Phooey. It was sprinkling outside, and still pretty warm, so I decided to venture out in the car to deliver magazines. It looked really stormy as I headed north, so I nixxed that idea. I got gas and delivered magazines to my friend Cecelia who lives around the corner from me. We sat and visited for a while. Even though she’s in Bayside too, she had power.
By the time I got back home, power had been restored. It had only been out about an hour and a half. This had reminded me that I need to keep a list of things to do when the power goes out next time, so I’m prepared. Sometimes I can sleep right through it, like when there’s a hurricane and I can count on the power being out overnight. Overnight in the summer in Florida with windows closed and no a/c or fan gets muggy quick. In 2004, I lost power for a week each during 2 big storms. If I have no power and no internet, I can’t get work done, so I need to get to a place where I can work. And sleep in comfort. Thankfully my good friends put me up each time.
Now I know to be prepared with plenty of things I can do with no power, like the filing. I think it’s funny that it didn’t occur to me to simply sit and read one of the many books I have here and never seem to make time for.
Go figure.