The return of light

We finally made it to Toronto last Saturday, about 9 hours late. When we arrived, we found that much of the city was totally dark, reducing major intersections to simple four-way stops, and leaving things eerily quiet. Although power was on at our destination when we left, it had gone back out by the time we arrived. Everything was coated in a thick sheet of ice, and at night we were pretty well housebound in the dark. Hundreds of thousands of people were without power, and prospects for getting everything fixed before Christmas were not good. Fortunately, the home of my sisters-in-law has two gas fireplaces capable of heating the whole house in a power outage, and the temperatures outside were cold enough to turn the front porch into a refrigerator/freezer. So although the nights were dark and we were dirty (water was not fully functional in the city at first, and then there was no hot water for showers), we spent the next 3 days in relative comfort.

Knitting by candlelight on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Day, the propane camp stove was brought out to the porch and Jeff's sister's partner made scrambled eggs and toast for Christmas breakfast. We had fondue for lunch. Then, mid-afternoon, we experienced a Christmas/Festivus miracle:

And so, we were able to cook Christmas dinner and dessert, and celebrate in full light. Other than regular showers and cooking, our 3 days in the dark were really not that different than they would have been if we had had power. We talked, played games, went out to a movie, ate cookies (fortunately I had frozen some of our overabundance and packed them for our trip), were enchanted by my baby niece, ate take-out, and overall had a merry time. We were also fortunate to have access to a working shower and kitchen at the tiny apartment of Jeff's brother's wife's cousin, so we were even able to bake a few more cookies and get a shower on Christmas Eve. When the power came back on, the major difference was that we didn't have to leave the house to watch a movie, cook food, or take a shower.

I hope everyone had as nice a Christmas as we did!