Counting my many blessings

 Remember that what you're seeing on the news is the worst of what happened, but I don't think it's representative of what most of us experienced.  More about getting through last week later.  

There wasn't much time to quilt or sew.  All the normal stuff took so long.  But, I did take a little time in the mornings for some project work.  

I got the next two flower blocks done.  The poppy and nasturtium blocks were fun, but I wish my reds had a little more contrast in the poppy, and I replaced several pieces on the nasturtium block more than once before I was happy with it.  

That makes six blocks.  the next one up looks like a challenge.  Fortunately, there aren't many with a lot of pieces.  There are 32 in this one.  That feels like so many more than it really is.  The photo quilt used two blues, so I am too.  All the freezer paper templates are cut out, but I haven't gone to stash for the fabrics yet.  I'd like to make a trip to the fabric store and pick up some more solids.  I've been surprised how much poly there is in my stash of solids.  I'm determined not to use it, so I'm making a pile of it to give away, if guild ever meets f2f again and if there's a "free table".

I had the nasturtium started when they told us to conserve electricity last week, but I wouldn't start the poppy block because I would need the iron, and that wasn't "necessary", so I picked up a WIP.  

I started this afghan a while back and ran out of white yarn.  My plan was to ask Project Linus for a small ball of white to finish it, but who knows when they'll be able to get together again, so I bought a skein.  I picked it up last week because I could sit with it across my lap in and work on it.  It kept me toasty warm and gave me something to do with my hands.  I have enough balls of yarn to do 3-4 more sections, and bring it really close to 60" long.  That should be perfect size.  

I was able to work all week, except I took Friday off because I was tired and "over it".  When I was working, I sat with this afghan across my lap and legs.  It's a very heavy afghan and it kept me plenty warm.  I didn't remember it being as heavy as it is, but I was glad I'd used the smaller hook when I was making this one.  It was perfect.  

We woke last Monday without water.  We had a frozen pipe.  Our pipe didn't burst, thankfully  Fortunately, we had neighbors who had water and they were willing to help us fill buckets and schlep them down the hill.  We have a lot of 5 gal buckets and I have a lot of really big pots and pans, and we filled them all over a couple days.  And, then came the process of managing the water.  Some went to drinking water, some to bathing, some to doing dishes and after, we used it to flush.  Moving and hauling water became Rob's job and I was in charge of food.  I gave us three healthy, hot meals each day, making things that took a minimum of water and gave a maximum of leftovers.  On Friday, I even splurged and made cookies, because we definitely needed a reward.  I even managed to feed the birds.  

It was beautiful.  On Monday.  

  By Tuesday, the novelty had worn off.  

On Wednesday around noon, the frozen pipe thawed and suddenly we had water coming out of faucets.  It took us both a second to register what was happening, but we both ran to the middle of the house to let the other one know and then we started searching for leaks.  We didn't find any, and the pressure was low,  but the water heater had kept the water warm.  I told Rob I wanted a shower before I went back to work and we both had a chance to shower before the water pressure dropped to a trickle, and we were back to managing buckets.  We managed our buckets so well that we were able to share buckets of clean water with a couple neighbors.  

The power stayed on, but the city asked us to be ultra conservative, so Rob and I each got one light bulb and there was usually one TV on in the house, but that's all the power we were using except for the furnace and my work laptop and monitors.  We were even able to let some neighbors charge their devices at our house.  We were very glad of the extra insulation, new windows and doors, and energy efficient central air unit we put in last year.  But, even with the thermostat low, the furnace ran most of the time.  

In the end, we took time to be grateful.  We were only inconvenienced and in the words of one of my co-workers, it's better to be stinky than cold.  We're seeing our neighbors battle burst pipes, we know many of them went days without power.  By Saturday, it was warm enough to walk the dogs, but the neighborhood was quiet.  I think everyone was a little shell-shocked.  But, everyone we passed was friendly and wanted to make a show of saying hello.  Hello was a way to commemorate that we'd all been through something really hard and we'd come out the other side by helping one another.  We're still boiling all our drinking water.  But, the weather is warm and the skies are blue and something unusual happened and it's a good time to count all my blessings, one by one because we got through it.

Be well and have a great week!  And, be grateful.  

Lane