Carbon Monoxide Night

 

Sun and Shade and Bitter Cold

The power to our entire valley went out yesterday late afternoon. I reported the outage to PSE online as soon as the generator kicked in. We have a whole house generator, just outside the downstairs of the house that runs off our propane tank. It has run since. So we have heat and electricity but no running water. The well house sits on our lot but runs off a separate power box. We do have a generator in the well house but it runs off gasoline and cannot therefore run for very long and not at all unsupervised. So we cannot flush or shower.

At first, PSE told us the power would be restored at 3 a.m. this morning. No biggie. But when the carbon monoxide detectors went off at 4:00 a.m., not only did we have no power yet, but we had to open windows and run all the venting fans to clear the carbon monoxide gathering invisibly inside. The power restoration time was changed to 1:00 p.m. today last evening so my son went out at 4:30 a.m. to pick up bottled water from a service station in Cle Elum that opens at 5:00 a.m. Along the way, where the power was on and off was visible. What was not visible was what caused the outage. It's probably a substation going down. There were no crews out either, which considering the extreme cold, was not surprising. In the meantime he had melted and boiled a potful of snow, which I used to make tea and now coffee.

The loft where I sleep on the third floor, has no installed heat and went down to 42 degrees after we vented all the inside air. The rest of the house stayed warmer. But we had several additional alarms, including one just a few minutes ago.

We are still better off than most of the other 800-plus folks without power because most don't have generators, and a good few are not even over here as it is just too cold. It's currently 0 degrees F, but was much colder in the night. This is pipe-freezing weather and I also went over to the loft and turned up the heat there, opening the bathroom cupboard to help keep the pipes warm. Fortunately. the pipes come up through the floor, not the walls. I will be going over shortly to open the kitchen cupboards for the same reason.

I've already been out to put out some fresh suet for the chickadees. One bird arrived just a few inches from me as soon as it saw me outside, waiting for the tiny blobs I put out. A couple more came after I went inside, and I went out twice to discourage the jays from gobbling up the rest.

For now, there are enough suet feeders out for the chickadees to be feeding on one, with the jays busy higher up near the garage. I'll put more suet out at intervals during the day. It makes my day to have a very small bird sitting in the snow beside me, waiting for a bit of suet and seed to be placed close enough to it for the bird to just reach forward and pick up the food and leave. At least one of the chickadees will also take food from my hand.

Life is made worthwhile by such small pleasures, even with the rest of the current circumstances.