Unplugged ~ An April Fools Snow Day
April 3, 2011
No joke though. We truly had a snow day on Friday.
The college where Damien works told all "non-essential" employees to stay home on Friday. A big wet storm blew in downing power lines, including the ones on our street.
We started the morning normally enough for a snow day. Sleeping in followed by a leisurely breakfast. We made the decision to not do any moving prep but to take the day off. Which for us adults would mean some unplanned for but much appreciated writing time interspersed with outdoor activity and playing with the children.
But Life had other plans in store. And when the power went out mid morning anything we hoped to do with electronics - photo editing, e-mail, writing, listening to music - went out the window.
And what filled that space was silence and time. Blessed, rare commodities in our lives.
Of course with three kids there isn't a lot of natural silence but Damien took all the kids for a walk to the grocery store after lunch and I had the house to myself.
A very quiet house to myself.
I drank tea - thank goodness for camping stoves. And read. Lots.
I could almost feel the cares of the week - the moving, writing, housework - go swoosh out the door and in its place perfect peace.
When the family came back home Damien read aloud to us and I colored.
I have a really hard time sitting still and listening without doing something with my hands. But since those opportunities are so rare these days I don't have any handicraft projects on the go. Instead of knitting, which would have been nice I colored in Laurent's coloring book.
It was so relaxing. I truly had nothing better to do so I could just sink into it.
During the reading aloud, sometime after 4:30 we heard a beep and whir from the computer as the power came back on. Damien continued to read and I eventually got up to sharpen a pencil crayon at the electric sharpener and the long moments of peace and quiet were broken.
But for a few hours we had a quiet, electronic-free day. Even with the chill (our natural gas heat goes out with the power) we appreciated being unplugged.
I wonder if we could rig that up again somehow?
