Toto!-Come Back!

Well we survived our first hurricane here in Central Ohio last weekend. In my thirty-some years here I don't think I've ever seen a day with so much strong wind and for so long. 30-40 mph winds with 50 mph gusts from about 11 am until 8 pm. Our house survived, thankfully we had our tree trimmed earlier this year. My brother had a his tree uproot and fall on his house as did numerous others in town. There was a lot of damage done by falling trees and limbs as well as other debris moving about. I believe the final number was 300,000 American Electric Power customers lost power (not to mention the people who have other power companies) some for a day and some are still waiting for their power to come back on, possibly as late as Monday.
I was happy that the veggies held their own in the wind, lost a few tomatoes and the sweet potato vines looked a little messy but everything was still intact and growing fine.
It was kind of nice to be "powerless" for a while, realizing how ridiculously dependant on electricity we have become and how easily people panic. The lines at the stores for batteries and Ice, the lines at the gas stations (as if wind were going to make us run out of fuel). We were holding up fine, even enjoying ourselves a bit. We grilled out with friends Sunday and Tuesday we had a family fire and cooked hot dogs and camper pies, Casie even came up with a new culinary delight-Fire Roasted Pickle Slices!
We obviously have power back now (I'm a little disappointed) but we have decided to practice "power outages" once or twice a month now since we had so much fun. The kids were in bed on time and had no trouble getting to sleep because it was so quiet inside and out, I had no insomnia problems, in fact the opposite, we were getting sleepy by 10:30 pm without any artificial lighting or TV or Computer to stimulate us. Perhaps my favorite thing was the kids lack of desire to watch TV. They played well together and behaved very well, to them it was a fun camping trip with indoor plumbing and comfortable beds, and when the power finally came back on, they didn't even care! They found out we had power and then went right back to playing outside, perhaps I can turn them into dirt farmers after all!
-Germ