in the here & now

This has been a year not only of rain but of wind. We had big windstorms in the spring that took lots of trees down, and then again last week and this week, big wind. I haven’t been out and about to see which trees it might have gotten this time. The first windstorm killed someone I knew, not well -- blew a tree down on her car, freak accident they said. Here we lost power both times, this last time for four days.

When I’m home it seems I’m always doing dishes, and so while the power was out I did dishes --I just did them differently than how I do them with the power on since we generally do not have running water without the electricity. And then the dirty water became chicken water to further conserve what water we hauled. We had a wealth of books from the library so we read them by day and then by candle light when the sun went down. We kept the fires going because it was cold, really cold. We genuinely enjoy being around each other for the most part. The first evening without power we told stories and tales and eventually shared dreams we’d had throughout our lives, all six of us. The second day, husband and I had a deep discussion about the theological implications of “saved by faith” vs. “saved by faith alone”, and Presbyterians vs. Baptists, and the like. That night we got the whistles out and the kids learned to play Christmas songs on them, and we all took turns playing various songs for the rest of the time. And we read more and told more tales and played more music and read more books and eventually the power came back on and we all took showers.

Here are some photos from the snowstorm between the windstorms: