Christmas Dreaming

Well, as you may know, I live in Cincinnati, Ohio.  On Sunday, we caught the after-effects of Ike.  The winds that Ike brought were so wild!  Our neighbor’s aluminum shed blew OVER THE FENCE and into our yard!  We had many, many, many downed trees in our neighborhood and all over the tri-state area.  Power has been out at our house since about 1:15PM (EST) on Sunday.  Therefore, we have had the chance to experience a little “primitive” living.  Well…primitive for today’s lifestyle.  We’ve been grocery shopping day-to-day, buying just what we can eat in the next 24 hours, and everyone in the city has been scrounging for ice and milk.  So far, the closest place we have found milk that a store will actually sell (most won’t sell what they have because their power had been out for too long)…is an hour away!  For a gallon of milk!  So, in the spirit of being frugal, we and our neighbors have been getting together lists of what each person needs from the store so that only one trip is made each day instead of each family making the trip.  I’m choosing to look on the upside and opportunity of this temporary “hardship”.  For one, we and our neighbors have really banded together for support…something we’ve never quite done before now.  We have always been friendly with our neighbors, and closer to some than others; but now we are really supporting and uplifting each other.  We sit together around one another’s firepit each night just talking and speculating about how much longer it will be, how it used to be when each of us was younger (we have a very varied age group among us), all of the good things that have come out of it, and how much worse it could have been.  My daughter has not seen the blue of a computer screen for four days now, nor the entrancing light and sounds of a television.  Instead, she has spent her entire days outside finding things to do, making friends, just like we did when we were little.  What a blessing, just when I felt like all the hustle and bustle of my daily life was becoming too overwhelming, now in the evenings, we just eat dinner we cooked on the grill and clean up a bit, and then relax with the neighbors out in the quiet evening around the fire.  I’ll be back on here tomorrow (at work again) to tell a little more.  Hope to see you then!