Here's the story:
On Friday we were frantically trying to get out of town to go see the cousins in Vanderhoof for Spring Break. Laundry was in the washer and drier. Dirty dishes were in the sink and dishwasher. The vacuum was waiting at the ready to do its job. Leftovers were waiting to be nuked for lunch. And then we would be off.
But--at 10:30 the power went out.
This is about the sixth time this has happened this winter, so I grumbled and hoped it would come back on soon. Naomi wondered how it could possibly be out on a sunny day like this with no wind at all. I wondered what I was going to do about taking clothes to Vanderhoof since I was counting on the ones in the laundry.
By noon I realized we were not getting power before we left, so I hung up all the clothes, loaded the dishwasher as full as it would go and set the delay start, heated leftovers in a frying pan, and tried to figure out if the switch on this side of the room is up and the one on that side of the room is down, are the lights on or off?
We left an hour late and I thought the worst of my worries was how many lights were really left on.
(A picture of our house using no flash)
We came back six days later at 9 pm. The minute I saw the blackness I knew something was wrong. The garage door would not go up and I immediately started mourning my three freezers' worth of food.
We went in to stinky, chilly darkness. The kids were terrified. Dallin was sure I had forgotten to pay the electric bill.
We started our gas fire (which gives off almost no heat, by the way), got the kids' sleeping bags, found flashlights, candles, and the most recent electric bill (which acquitted me), and called BC Hydro.
The kitchen was flooded with melted ice cubes and who knows what else, the kids were huddled together in the living room singing primary songs to each other, Dallin was playing with breakers and flashing his flashlight along the power lines to try to determine the problem, and I was consoling my freezer grief by watching for the Hydro truck.
We thought we saw the truck once because a pick-up slowed down and drove past our house two or three times. But it didn't come up.
We thought it must be coming now when we saw flashing lights come up our driveway, but they were the blue and red kind and came carrying men with guns.
We went out on the very dark porch to meet the men with guns who said abruptly, "Put everything down and put your hands up!" Yikes! They were standing behind their opened car doors a distance away from us with their hands on the top of the door. (Dallin says they definitely weren't pointing guns at us, but why would they have empty hands on top of the car door pointing at us?) "Who are you?" I blabbered some answer that included the fact that our kids were probably completely freaked out inside. "Male. Come here." I watched my husband walk over with his hands up and the officer don rubber gloves and pat him down. "Female. Come." Are you kidding? Is this for real? I thought my biggest worry was the melted ice cream and the thawed meat. (Also, the frozen lasagna and Chinese hors d'oeuvres I just bought the day before we left. Bummer. )
In the end, I felt touched that two of our neighbours had seen suspicious looking lights in our house and called the police, disappointed about the freezers, a bit nauseated by the curdled milk, safe and cold in my bed, and grateful for my children cozily sleeping on the floor of the living room by the fire.
*As a Post Script--I've decided that if our neighbours are watching us so carefully, I think I will stop walking around the house in my underwear.
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