Outage

Yesterday the weather broke from the snowy and frigid pattern we'd seen for several days.  The warmer, more windy weather returned.  During our little Arctic blast, my mom and I stayed put in our cozy little houses.  Other than the little snow boot path between our homes and Payson's little tracks to school, our yards looked vacant.  The vehicles had blankets of snow all over and around them, untouched.  Us prairie mommas keep things stocked up at home so we don't get stuck without yummy things to eat or things we need for the babies when the weather hits.  Nice and cozy we were....

I had crossed the street to retrieve the mail.  But I missed the sign on the door that was supposed to notify us of the scheduled power outage that was to occur between 3:30 and 6:00 pm.  Luckily, this is Geraldine.  People here are looking out for us.  Around 2 o'clock the phone rang.  Gary is an old rancher that now has retired to town.  He doesn't seem to have much to do, but is very nice.  He called because he noticed that our vehicles had not moved in several days.  So he figured we hadn't gone anywhere and probably hadn't seen the sign on the door of the post office.  He wanted to be sure we knew of the outage so we would not be unprepared or concerned.

This small kindness allowed us to to plan ahead for dinner without power and dig out the candles ahead of time.  It actually was kind of nice and peaceful for a couple of hours and then the lights came back on an hour ahead of schedule.  I guess that's how they do things in Geraldine....