Happy Anniversary, Cozy Cottage!

Four years ago, I bought a little house that I was madly in love with.  It was my first house that I ever bought and I knew this was the one as soon as I saw it.  I jokingly said that I bought Liesl a house because I wanted to make sure that she had a place with a nice yard that was just for her.  We have been so happy here and love this place.  We are very happy that a couple of years ago, Liesl's daddy, my sweet baboo joined us here.  This house has a lovely view of Monterey Bay and I love standing at my kitchen sink with a cup of coffee looking at the Bay.  Today is my four year anniversary of moving in. 

We had a bit of excitement here on the Monterey Peninsula yesterday.  We woke up to no power.  Something had happened to cause a power line to come down north of us, and several transformers to explode. This resulted in the loss of power for the day for 55,000 people.  We had planned on going to church, then I had several hours of work to do since this is my busy season at work.  We lost power at 7 am.  My house has a gas water heater and gas stove so we had the basics covered.  I was able to shower, thank goodness.   Things look worse when you can't take a shower.  A hot shower changes your perspective.  Afterward, I looked at my sweet baboo and said, "You must go hunting while I feed Liesl, and by hunting I mean you must go find coffee somewhere. LOL"  Bill was out with many other desperate souls in search of an open Starbucks.  Most stores were closed because they could not operate without power.  He ended up in a neighboring town in a long line of people with wild looks in their eyes awaiting their opportunity to order a grande latte.  He called me to tell me that it was going to be a while. 

One thing that we have really been stressing about is getting the house winterized before the rain comes.  We both work long hours so getting everything ready has been something we were worried about completing.  While Bill was hunting for coffee, I got the clippers to trim the front bushes to keep them from scratching up against the window in a storm.  I was close to finishing when Bill drove up with a Pumpkin Spice Latte for me.  He said that we should drink our coffee then we could trim the tree.  We got that tree trimmed and cleaned up.  We still had energy, so he borrowed a ladder from our neighbor and made sure the gutters were clear and checked the drain pipes.  I am proud to say we are storm ready!

The power outage ended up being a blessing.  We had fun working together and feel good that we don't have to worry.  I got to take a nap, tidy the house, do some cooking, and read a book.  I had made a large container of homemade minestrone earlier in the week, so we got to sit and have a leisurely bowl of soup together.  It was quite peaceful without TV, or the intrusion of electronic media.  We still did not have power when it got dark.  Luckily, we have our camping lanterns, so we read and I went to sleep around 8:30.  Power was restored around 11:30 pm.

A lot of people were really upset about the outage.  We saw it as an incredible blessing.  We had the blessing of extra time and that time moving a bit more slowly.  Sometimes blessings come disguised in wrappings of something difficult.