all apologies...

i really didn't mean to be gone so long. 
i've only just gotten electricity back a short while ago. as in, maybe a few hours ago the lights (and water, for that matter) finally came back.
this is a really great thing, because there's already about 2 inches of snow on the ground outside the door and it's getting kind of cold. also i think that one more day without light or water would maybe make me go off the handle the shining-style cuz it was making me crazy. i was also starting to think that it would literally never come back and i'd be forced to go to the mall for lights and hot coffee every single day.
living without electric and water for a few days was a real trip. we didn't have a generator for the first few days either. at first it was like camping. we had big bbqs with friends who had helped us cut tree limbs in order to get rid of stuff in the freezer before it went bad, which kept us from thinking about going back inside in the pitch black. we went for walks and went to the park when it was nice enough out. we did puzzles. played board games. listened to the radio. re-read old books. we did a ton of the stuff that we always say we should do more often. but after a week in, i was ready to throw in the towel and head to a hotel. we didn't because we kept thinking the power would come on soon.
so we stayed home and got creative. we filled jugs of water from a stream near our house for flushing toilets. we took baths at friends' and relatives' houses. we made a ton of food on top of the woodstove (like nachos, microwave pizzas, pretzels, roasted veggies and the like). in the end we even got desperate and went into storage at my in-laws' house to dig out our old portable dvd player and rented every redbox movie that we thought would be even remotely interesting. that helped a little, but didn't make up for the fact that we missed the walking dead this week.
but now that the power's back on, i already miss how quiet it was (well besides the generator...those things are insanely loud). i wish i could turn the power off for just a little while every single day.