Power Outage

On Wednesday night, we went to bed like normal. At 2:15am, I got a call from the emergency system alerting me that we were under a severe thunderstorm warning. High winds meant that the power is going to go out and about 15 minutes later, it did. The warning was in effect until 3:15am and as if on schedule, the rain stopped and the wind calmed down and I went back to bed, hoping that the power would be back on before I woke up.

But the power wasn’t back on and we found out the storm had caused a lot of damage for about 100 miles and over 25,000 people were without power. I assumed that meant we would not have power most of the day, but hopefully by late afternoon at the latest. The power company’s facebook page said it might take days to restore power for everyone, but I am an optimist and I figured that meant someone else, not camp.

Wrong again.

At 3:30 in the afternoon, “A” and I went into to town because I wanted to buy ice for my breastmilk.. I figured if we went to town and bought ice, the power would be back on by the time we returned. But at the end of our road, almost to the highway, there was a huge tree down and it had taken a large section of powerlines down with it. That was when I realized that it was going to be longer than just a trip to town before we got power back.

I bought a block of ice for my refrigerator to try to keep it cool inside. I bought two big bags of ice to pack into a cooler with all of my frozen cubes of baby food. I bought a 5 gallon jug of water for my house. 'A' and I stopped at a nearby camp to see if they had a generator (and thus would still have power and water, and then our plan was to ask to use their hose to fill up water jugs). They didn't. We started making plans for an extended power outage. 

The biggest concern with the power being out is the cooler and the freezer. It has been 90+ degrees all week and the cooler only stays cool for so long. We realized we were going to need to plan for Thursday dinner, Friday breakfast and lunch and also Sunday dinner (and then a new food delivery would come Monday morning). We gathered all of the coolers around camp, shoveled all of the ice out of the ice machine into garbage bags, grabbed lanterns and closed ourselves into the freezer. We packed the coolers with ice and with the food we needed to save, knowing basically everything else would go bad and need to be thrown out. Food spoilage is actually covered by insurance, so it's not quite as devastating to think about throwing out thousands of dollars in food, but it is SUCH a waste and I hate it. So we saved all of the food we would need for the those meals. We went to the local resort that still had power to load up on drinking water. We filled buckets to manually flush toilets.

At the talent show on Thursday night, we brought out all of the ice cream and popsicles from the camp store and let the kids eat unlimited treats. I warned them to make good choices and let them know that this was a one time thing in the history of camp, but it was still pretty fun. Later we had all camp night swim for kids to "shower". 

Overall, the kids weren't affected and they had a great time at camp.

I, on the other hand, had a full blown nervous breakdown on Thursday night. It might have actually been the worst night of camp in the history of my 8.5 summers here. 

We've had power outages before, and in 2013, we had a multi day outage like this one. It sucks and it makes everything difficult and kind of stressful, but it's not the end of the world. Having a baby in a power outage added a whole new level of stress to the power outage though. 

It's a pain to go without hot water when the power goes out. But when you have a baby, it's an actual problem. I needed to wash bottles and nipples. I needed to give my hot sticky baby a bath. 

I don't turn my air conditioning on very often, and if it was just me, it wouldn't bother me to sweat it out. But with a overheated bulldog and overheated baby, I was losing my mind with anxiety. I put Olivia in my van for about 30 minutes to try to cool her down. When I called my husband in a panic, he suggested I sleep in the van with the two of them. Adding to the stress, we switched cars and somehow in all of the shuffling, I sent the carseat home and so 'M's dad picked it up from my house and was bringing it up with him on Friday when he was coming for a visit. But at about 10pm, my baby was hot to the touch, my trailer was HOT and filled with bugs from my attempt at keeping the door open, and I was desperately considering driving to the lodge with my baby NOT in a carseat. We didn't sleep in the van and I didn't drive my baby without a carseat- by midnight, it cooled down slightly and we were all able to sleep. 

When it was just me, losing power and having all of the food in my refrigerator go bad wasn't that big of a deal. But I have several bottles of breastmilk in the fridge at all times, multiple bags of frozen breast milk in my freezer, and about 20 bags of pureed vegetable cubes of baby food. 

I am the one who is ultimately responsible for camp, the kids, the staff, the property, the food, EVERYTHING, and in the past, my entire focus has been on making sure all of those things were taken care of. But this time around, I found that my priority was entirely different. My immediate concern was personal. I went into town to buy ice and water for myself because all I could think of was keeping breastmilk cool, having enough water to not only drink, but also to wash bottles and bathe my child. The entire camp of kids and staff- once my personal needs were taken care of, THEN I focused on them.

If I'd had the carseat, I would have driven through the night to bring the baby and Olivia home. It would have been easier to focus on my job of leading a camp of people. But instead, I was trapped and so I called my husband in hysterics. 

Camp used to be a fun adventure. A multi day power outage was inconvenient and a little uncomfortable, but an experience that made for a great story. It's entirely different now- it was scary and stressful and didn't feel like an adventure, it felt threatening. Every fiber of my being was focused on the well-being of my tiny human and EVERYTHING about camp seemed to go against that. 

The kids left Friday and I had all of my stuff packed and loaded in the van so that the minute the staff meeting ended, I was able to get on the road and rush all of us OUT of there. Power came back on about 30 minutes after I left and everything was back to normal when we returned on Sunday. But I'm left feeling a little weary. A little uneasy about this place I love so much. Because I still love it, but I don't love it as much as my baby. And situations like the power outage make me feel like it is a choice between the two.