Presence

Not a Prepper (But Maybe I Should Be)

January 8, 2022

Our heat source and cook stove when the power was out. So grateful for our woodstove. (But you can see that the ledge for cooking is mighty narrow).

When we lived in Utah, I used to chuckle a little at the doomsday prepper people. Self-reliance is highly valued in LDS culture, which is not a bad thing, but really, let’s not go overboard, right?  Most of my neighbors were investing in food and proudly outfitting their basements with food storage units, with the goal of having a year’s supply saved for each family member. The Utah Costco sold big tubs of ready to eat foods  and a contraption that would automatically rotate your cans for you, so that you would automatically use the oldest ones first.

I am not chuckling quite so much at this kind of thing anymore.

2021 in these parts was a year of “mosts” and “leasts.” The most rain in a single day in Sacramento (October)!  A month with virtually no measurable rain in Sacramento (November)!  The rainiest December on record (last month!). Snow pack in the Sierra went from next to nothing to 160 percent of normal in basically a few days, with most of that coming from the storm that brought down our power lines. Our power was out for nine days. At this writing, some people who live in remote areas around here are still waiting.

It’s not that I thought anyone else would necessarily take care of us. At least, I didn’t think I thought that.

But I guess I trusted the power company to keep the power on, and the water company to keep the water safe, and the propane companies to make deliveries like they promised. Our public utilities had been strong and trustworthy for as long as I could remember. Why would that change?

This week, local water companies pleaded for customers to reduce their water use because canals were damaged in the storm, and while they are being repaired (who knows how long that will take), the only water that is available is what was in the storage tanks. Propane companies reneged on their promises to make scheduled deliveries, and the power company sent out vague texts that declared that “restoration efforts will start soon and continue for several days.” Continue Reading…

Presence

Down Came the Snow

December 31, 2021

And out went the power.

Probably not a good time to head out to the deck for a little sunbathing. What I saw when I dared to open the door to the deck yesterday.

Five days now, and counting.

But if the power hadn’t gone out

If it hadn’t snowed.

I wouldn’t have borrowed a generator. Wouldn’t have learned how to use it. Would still be a little afraid.

Wouldn’t have gone to the auto parts store, and felt a sense of blessed relief when the first employee who saw me after I walked in, apparently looking a little shell-shocked and distressed about where in that big store the gas cans resided, asked me, so politely, “Are you looking for a gas can?”

“How did you know?” I asked.

I must have looked that out of place. Not like someone who was working on her car for fun on a Thursday afternoon, bopping in to get the right replacement part.

He then disappeared into the back of the store, deep into the bowels, and returned five minutes later with my most new very precious thing: a five gallon gas can. Apparently, most of the world in these parts has been flocking to stores, desperately searching for generators, and then looking for gas cans in order to power those things. Fifty thousand of us have been without power here. I found one on my first try, in a store that I traditionally avoid as much as possible, because it is full of the auto parts, which I know very little about, and also the auto parts salesmen, who sometimes tend to be a little man-splainy.

If the power hadn’t gone out, I wouldn’t have gotten help from a man at the gas station, who was kneeling on the ground at the bank of pumps behind me, filling up eight smaller gas cans.

“What (the heck!) do I do with this thing? Is there a trick?” I asked him. Continue Reading…