Thursday, April 18, 2019

Thank The Gummi Mary, Genius And Farmer H Are Looking Out For Old Mrs. Hillbilly Mom

Last Thursday night at 1:45 a.m., I was kicked back in my OPC (Old People Chair), watching DVRs of The Office. Not a care in the world, chillin' with my OPC heater, enjoying a 10-year-old sitcom episode. Does life get any better than that?

WHOOPSIE!

The lights and TV went off! I could faintly hear the whoosh of wind or rain outside. I vaguely remembered rain in the overnight forecast. I don't watch the news or weather any more, seeing as how it can't give me a day off work. I hadn't noticed any thunder.

As quickly as it went off, it came back on. I didn't even have time to wonder what would happen to me in my OPC. It runs on electricity, though. The first time we had a power outage while I was in my OPC, I folded it down as soon as the power flickered back on. Good thing, because back then, after several stops and starts, the power stayed off for a few hours.

Genius and Farmer H put their heads together, and hooked me up with a backup power source. I swear, it looks like a power cord for a laptop, only bigger, with a rectangular thingy that seems to hold power for a little while.

When I went upstairs to bed, I reset the microwave clock. Farmer H had no idea that a storm went through and knocked out the power for less than one minute.


Until he drove to his Storage Unit Store on Friday morning, and saw a big tree down, across the road from the parking lot.

When I went to town, taking a detour because the creek had risen so much that I knew it would be over the bridge on my regular route... I also saw random trees down. Assorted sizes, here and there. Not a whole grove of trees. Just singles. The ones I noticed were healthy trees, not dead or hollow or really old like this one. They were splintered, too. Like they had been twisted. A couple of trees just had one limb twisted off.

Had I known that we were having rotational winds, I probably would have been more concerned when the power went off.

2 comments:

River said...

Your OPC is electric? An electric chair...don't they usually have those in prisons? oh, I'm so funny. But really, electric?
Nice that you now have back up power though. I'm always sad to see trees torn down in storms.

Hillbilly Mom said...

River,
Okay, that made me snort! Now I'm REALLY sure that Farmer H is trying to kill me. He and Genius cooked up this idea, and got the OPC for me a couple Christmases ago. At first I was not pleased that they thought I was so old and feeble that I needed a chair to lift me out itself. My knees love it, though!

I'm sadder when the downed trees take away my electricity.