EMP Part 2
Second part of the new story I thought of while lying in bed sick this week.
Hope you like it.
For a family used to their entertainment coming from a variety of electrical sources, the day seemed to drag on forever. The kids quickly tired of coloring and wanted to watch TV. Owen had to explain why the TV wouldn’t work when the power was out. Then he had to explain why they couldn’t put batteries in the TV like they did some of their other toys. He had no explanation on why various electronic toys the girls had didn’t work. He had never experience a power outage that not only fried every piece of electrical equipment they had plugged in, but also manage to somehow short out their cars, watches, laptops, the kid’s toys, and a radio he had out in the garage.
“I’m bored,” Cheyenne said for what seemed like the hundredth time that day.
“I know sweetie,” Sera replied. “Why don’t you color some more?”
“I’m tired of coloring. Can we make popcorn?”
“The electricity is out. The microwave doesn’t work, remember?”
“Oh yea. I forgot. I’m hungry. When’s lunch?”
Not having a single clock in the house that worked, Sera had no idea what time it was. “Ok. It must be around lunch time. I’ll see what I can find.”
Owen got up and went into the kitchen with Sera. “How’ll we do this?” he asked her. “There’s no way to warm anything up?”
“Let’s get something out of the frig. Make sandwiches or something.”
“Ok. I grab the stuff out of the frig if you’ll get some chips. Let’s use paper plates so we don’t have to wash dishes.”
“Ok. Don’t hold the door open very long. I heard that you can still use for a few days if you are careful and don’t let all the cold air out.”
“Where did you hear that?” Owen wanted to know.
“You remember all those disaster shows that came on TV after Katrina? I watched a few of them one night when I had the flu. I wished I had taken some notes.”
“Me too. I don’t know what we are going to do if they power stays off more than a few days.”
“Why don’t we go out back and make this a picnic. Maybe that will get some of the cabin fever out of the girls.”
“Out of me as well,” Owen laughed. It was hard to go from a day scheduled in fifteen minute increments to one with no clocks and nothing to do. Everything they did was electronic.
The Miller family had a wonderful time with their backyard picnic. The girls and Owen played games, swung on the swing set, and ended up having a pretend Easter egg hunt. Owen and Sera spent more time with the girls that afternoon then they had in years. No cell phones, emails, or “must watch” TV shows interfered with the family outing. They didn’t even miss electricity and wouldn’t have known it was out if it wasn’t for the water being out as well. The situation with the toilets was getting critical and neither Owen nor Sera knew what they were going to do about it. They couldn’t use their water to flush the toilets without knowing for sure when it would come back on. They might be rationing food or water at this time, but they both felt using drinking water to flush a toilet was a bad idea.
“What are we going to do about it?” Sera wanted to know.
“We’re going to have figure something out. We can’t keep using the toilets.”
“That’s fine for you. You can go outside. What about me and the girls? We can’t go outside like you?”
“You may have to if the power doesn’t come on in the next day or so. We can’t keep using the toilets.”
“We’ll see. Remember, it’s supposed to get cold tomorrow. They are talking about a freeze tomorrow night.”
“I forgot about that. I hope someone can get the power back on by then and tell us how to reset everything. I think all we should have to do is flip a few of those circuit breakers in the garage by the water heater and everything should come back on.”
“Let’s hope,” she said. “This wind is horrible, let’s go back in. Besides, the clouds are coming in and they look like rain.”
“Rain. I’m going to pull out the girl’s pool. Maybe we can catch some rainwater in it.”
“And do what with it? We can’t drink it, they swam in the thing.”
“We can use the water for Rufus and for the toilets. It we get enough, maybe use it to wash up some.”
“That I’ll agree with. How much do you think it will take to fill the pool? They were talking about an inch or more.”
“I don’t know. I’ll put it under the corner of the porch where it always run off. That may help to fill it faster.”
After coming back in from their outing, it didn’t take long for the sun to start going down and the girls to get bored again. “Daddy, I’m bored. I’m tired of coloring.”
“I know sweetie. I’m bored as well. It’s too dark to go outside again. Don’t you have anything in your room to play with?”
“Nothing works.”
“Wait a minute,” Owen said. “I think I know what we can do.”
Without saying another word, Owen ran up the stairs to the upstairs hall closet. Having nothing better to do, the rest of the family followed. “What are you doing?” Sera asked.
“Wait a minute,” Owen replied. “Found it!” Owen came out of the closet dragging a big plastic storage tub. “Remember, we put all those old board games in this tub a few years ago when we cleaned out downstairs.”
Sera smiled. She remembered playing some of those games with Cheyenne before Dakota was born. There should be something in there to entertain the kids for the next day or so until things went back to normal.
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