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It was great to be back in the kitchen with hot water and heat, today! We’ve been cooking every meal on the gas cook top, but somehow it’s just not the same. Six days without electricity can take a toll on a person. Ya just don’t realize how much life revolves around it until it is taken away.

Not even talking about the computers and electronic devices that litter our home – it’s little things like light. And refrigeration. And hot water. And heat.

Heat. What a concept. It was starting to get cold after 6 days with no thing but the fireplace to warm the house. Thank the stars for that. And thank the stars for the new window and doors that Sharpe Builders put in this fall!

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That really was our saving grace. We would have frozen with the single-paned window we had… I’m getting frost-bit just thinking about it.

The other thing that worked was Victor’s brother bringing their mom up to their sister’s house in North Jersey. Poor Nonna would not have lasted here. We maintained about 60° in the living room, but the rest of the house was decidedly chillier. And Nonna would put on a sweater if she was standing in front of a blast furnace. No… it was good that she was not here. I’m heading up tomorrow afternoon to bring her back down – just in time for the next storm to hit.

We did eat well in spite of the weather and difficulties. I mean… we do have our standards. And while I have always lusted after a walk-in refrigerator, I finally had a walk-out refrigerator/freezer!

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We used a couple of plastic bins and kept all of our fresh and frozen food outside. We did not lose a single thing. Meats and such were still frozen solid and refrigerated items were cold and fresh. And we got to totally clean the fridge and freezer – something that really doesn’t happen often enough.

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This is standing towards the back of the driveway looking to the street. I dug all that out to get to work.

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This is a part of the front yard. Our front walk is under that somewhere.

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And that top wire is our electricity. It was ripped from the house by a neighbor’s falling tree.  A couple of nice guys from Boston fixed it this afternoon.

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It was a nice thing, because I was running low on ground coffee. Brewing is easy – boil water and use a strainer and a filter. It just takes a while when you’re doing it by candlelight.

Candlelight… Tapers are the only way to fly. Pillars look great, but they don’t throw any light. We have lots of tapers, now, and a simple plate and a drop of wax makes a simple candle-holder. We got good at this stuff.

And even with the mass destruction out there – our neighborhood looks like a war-zone – there is such beauty in the snow and ice. It is treacherous, for sure, but damn, once the heat comes back on, a guy can really appreciate just how beautiful it is.

I’ve lived where it snows a hellava lot more than this and I’ve had to deal with burst pipes and no electricity and snow on the ground from October to May – piling up storm after storm. There’s a part of me that absolutely loves it.  And then we have the rest of me saying I’m gonna be 62 in a few more months – I’m no longer 25. I’m prime heart-attack-while-shoveling-snow-age.

I think I’ll go for the beauty…