Losing power

We lost power for about 21 hours (about 8pm yesterday to 5pm today) due to the heavy snow weighing down power lines and knocking down power lines.  The longest we've been without power was during hurricane Isabel in Sept. 03--from about 5pm on a Thursday evening to about 7am Saturday.  But because it was Sept, we needed neither A/C nor heat.  Much different to lose power during the winter and have the house get colder and colder as the hours go by.  Raven got very anxious last night and was running up and down the stairs, in and out of our bedroom.  The Verizon box in our garage was beeping, and the noise upset her.

Earlier, when I was walking her around 7:30pm, we saw and heard a couple of light explosions--that must have been when our power went out.  When we got back to our street, she did not want to go back in our house.  At one point, I walked away without her to go back in the house (I rarely do something like that--I'm too afraid she'll run off).  When I turned around she was right behind me, but then went back across the street and sat down.  I finally had to pull her across to our walkway.  She must have sensed something was wrong, since no lights were on.  Funny how sensitive animals are.  She slept on our bed part of the night--she only does that when she's scared; she may also have been cold.  As she's gotten older, more things frighten her--rain (not just thunder and lightening), power flickers and outages, beeping noises.  She's afraid of my George Foreman cooker--I'm convinced it's because I was using it one time when our power went out--so she heard the beeping and then everything went dark at once.  She ran up and down the stairs (guess that's a sign of anxiety) and when I tried to comfort her she was actually shaking with fear.

We've never gone more than one night without heat, thankfully.  Much easier to deal with power outages during daylight hours.  We bided our time today by eating out and going to a movie--I think I would have been too cold to sit home and read.  I did that once in the house we used to live in--I was reading Angela's Ashes.  Seemed appropriate, somehow--I could feel the discomfort.  We take central heating for granted in this country.  And many other things, for that matter...