Remember Electricity?

This may go down in the history books as the "Big Ice Storm of 2009." Tuesday it hit, ice all night, then sleet, then some more ice and freezing rain. Power went off that night but came back on Wed. morning. Then it went off, for certain. It's now Saturday afternoon and we still are without electricity.

Fortunately we'd put some water aside, just in case. But by yesterday we'd used most of that up, both drinking water and sponge bath and flushing water. We have heat, back up heaters of wood stove and propane wall heaters have kept us warm. Kerosene lights and candles lit the early evening. And we can light the gas cook stove for boiling and frying. By yesterday we'd started draining the hot water heater and emptying the water in the not so hot, hot tub. And talk of the ill fated Donner Party started to circulate.

Today, though, with none of us seeing much reason to get out of bed anymore, we decided to abandon ship. Our great friends, the Dalys, who live in Hawai'i but spend their summers at their condo on Table Rock Lake, have offered their space to us many times. So today, the idea of a hot shower, of news on t.v. of what's happened in the rest of the world this past week, just sounded too good to turn down. So, like the Beverly Hillbillies, we just packed up and moved to the city.

The road to our house still has not been plowed out. It's ice covered, with sleet on top, slush under that and ice under that. There are thousands of trees that have fallen across the roads and fences all over the county and lots of limbs down in our yard, too. Josh had cut several of the trees that had fallen across our road and yesterday, after 5 tries to get his car out of the driveway, and 3 exciting, sliding, swerving, spinning and frustrating tries at getting his car up the big hill above the house, he finally made it over THE hill. This morning, while the sleet/ice/slush was still frozen, we loaded up Barbara, agile at 93, and Molly, the dog, into the car and we all fled the scene and to Bill & Betty's comfy condo. We know just how those Clampits felt when they moved to Beverly Hills!

Without power we can't run the computers or ship products so we're almost a week behind in our shipping. If the power has not returned by Monday we'll ask our employees to work from another location for the day to get orders processed and ready to ship on Tuesday. We've heard that Carroll Electric, which supplies our power, had over 1,000 electric poles snapped off by the ice and it's unlikely they had that many poles on reserve. And farther down in Arkansas the ice storm was worse than here.

So all in all, we're fortunate and healthy. No potatoes will get planted this week, that's for sure. The lettuce, bok choy and onions that are already in the ground are covered by ice. The indoor plants from the normally sunny and warm sunporch are huddled together in the kitchen, awaiting warmer weather. With the temperature in ths 50s today some of the ice is melting but it will take a week for it to all go away and months to get the limbs and broken trees cleared away. Thanks for all the phone calls and nice comments people have left, asking if we're all right after the storm. We are, and doing much better now that we've all had showers!

All this going to bed at 6 and sleeping and sleeping, has given everyone a lot of time for dreaming. I started writing about dream pillows - those herbal mixtures that change the kinds of dreams you have - more than 20 years ago. You may run across some of my dream blends in herb shops around the country or find people teaching about them from one of my books. We offer all the bulk blends, dream pillows and supplies in case you're looking for something fun for Valentine's Day gifts. Romantic Dreams pillow would be a good choice. Or Pleasant Dreams for what I call, "a generic GOOD dream." Or possibly you know someone, child or adult, who has nightmares and trouble sleeping, and if so, Restful Sleep is the recommendation. You can find more information about dream pillows in various articles I've written if you click on the Jim's Columns button on our website and search through the postings.

With hot showers and warm beds, we bid everyone Pleasant Dreams for today.