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7 days without power. 168 jaw-clenching hours. Over 10,000 minutes spent curbing a hair trigger temper. “I DON’T CARE IF YOU HAVE NO LEGS. GET. ACROSS. THE. STREET. NOW.” No cable. No internet. No landline. Nothing but my street mattered right then anyway, but it would have been nice to see or hear the local news. Except for the local politicians who everytime they opened their blowhard mouths, just confirmed their idiocy. Oh, and no water. Because when you live in a beautiful rural area like me, it means you are the owner of a private well…that runs on an electric pump. The loss of heat is nothing compared to the loss of water. Flush the toilet? Fuggedaboutit. Wash your hands? No dice. You have to use antimicrobial baby wipes. Shower? “HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.” Only if you are a Comfort Inn VIP Guest or you have a friend lucky enough to have a generator. And because the power lines went down when colossal wet snow-covered tree branches cracked in the dead of night, crushing them and snapping telephone poles in two in the process, the road is closed. Which also means that your newspaper won’t be delivered and your garbage won’t be picked up. But FedEx, UPS and the USPS did not let a “Road Closed” sign deter them from their missions. They delivered. But it gets worse fast. Gas stations within a 5-mile radius are simply “out of gas,” because people lucky enough to own generators are sucking them dry down to the earth’s core. Area restaurants ranging from Panera to 4-star bistros are standing room only, densely-packed hives overpopulated by cranky, angry bees with a bad case of “Bee-O”. Laundromats, never a good place around which to loiter, are veritable tinder boxes, just waiting for the spark that will ignite a brawl. All the local hotels, motels and bed & breakfasts’ are bursting at the seams. Even the roads that are open aren’t immune to this locust-like event. The traffic is spectacular. You’d think people were out Christmas shopping already. EVERYONE is out on the road because NO ONE wants to be inside their cold, pitch black home where their toilets have been transformed into indoor outhouses. The only thing missing is graffiti on the walls of the bathroom that say things like, “Here I sit so brokenhearted, tried to shit and only farted. Yesterday I took a chance, saved a dime and shit in my pants.” (My all-time personal favorite which was scrawled on the inside of a bathroom door at a real campground in Maine.) For the past 7 days, Olive and I might as well have been living inside a tent in Calcutta. She probably minded all of this less than I did, but it severely disrupted both our routines, filling every day with dozens of minor, irritating inconveniences, many of which you don’t even imagine until you’re in a situation like this. I am happy to report that Olive was quite the trooper. Especially since she was essentially tethered to me for 7 days while we traipsed about neighborhoods throughout Northern New Jersey like Monty Python searching for the Holy Grail. We slept at our neighbor’s who lives behind us. We’d get up in the morning and go back to our house, check on things there, I’d feed Olive and let her out, then I’d get changed in the dark, trying to balance a flashlight in one hand and my pants in the other, and then we’d both go into the office. After work, we’d go over to a friend’s house, shower, have dinner and hang out there awhile. Then we’d make our way over to another friend’s house where I did a giant load of laundry and then it was back to our neighbor’s to sleep and start the insane routine all over again. I think what made it all worthwhile for Olive was that she got to sleep in the single pull-out bed with me for five nights. She’d sleep soundly, curled up next to me, never getting up once. Although it was funny to watch her expressions when people walked “above us.” Her head would jerk up and you could tell she was getting ready to bark, trying to determine what was making the noise and whether it was a threat to our safety. Her head cocked slightly, teeth barely exposed as half of her lip curled, and her pupils microscopic, frozen with interest. I would quietly plead with her to keep her bird hole shut. She’d look at me somewhat incredulously and then sink back down into the bed, safely tucked close to me. Since she doesn’t normally sleep in my bed, it was a nice, comforting treat, and a nice way to end each shitty day. Only I had to go to bed every night disturbed by the knowledge that the fact that this country relies on toothpicks strung together with dental floss to create its power system is a national disgrace. Olive, just snored contentedly next to me. We worry about different things.