Stormy Weather

I'm spoiled. I live in a perfect little spot in Virginia that never gets a lot of severe weather. We had a pretty nasty snow storm a few years back and I swore if that ever happened again I would move. I freaking HATE snow. I could move somewhere where it never snowed and be perfectly content forever. But, I consider myself lucky that we never experience some of the things other parts of the country do. Hurricanes and tornadoes simply scare the crap out of me. Well Friday night we came as close to something like that as I ever want to get. We had what was called a "Ring of Fire Derecho" and I never want to see one again.

We were very lucky at my house. It was just scary and we only lost power for a few hours. Many people are still without power and will be for a few more days. It was even worse over in WV. Both states are facing gas shortages thanks to the power outages, media hype, and our general tendency to panic around here because we aren't used to things like this. It's somewhat comical to go through a storm like this in the Facebook age. No one has power, but we all have cell phones to complain about that fact on Facebook. Most comments were out of frustration and totally understandable. Going without power for any length of time just sucks. I used to live in a place in the country where we would just randomly lose power for a few hours at a time. You forget how much you depend on it. Plus, more than twenty-four hours without a shower and I'm a bitch. It's why I don't camp anymore. But, some people were just freaking ridiculous about it. Thousands of people are without power. Crews are working day and night in record heat and they're acting like these people are just sitting around flipping coins to see who gets power and who doesn't. Some of it was really rather disgusting.

This experience has made me want to live small and off the grid (to some degree) even more. I need to get a bike so the gas thing is never an issue. There's a lot of things that this has brought to light and made me want to do. It's also made me happy to have so little. When you don't have much, you don't worry about what might get damaged. You don't have to worry about insurance claims or rebuilding something that was already a financial drain. Sure, if my car or my home had been destroyed I would have been devastated, but I see some of the things people are getting upset about and I'm just so happy that I don't have that burden. Sometimes less is so much more.