Then the lights went out.

Today it had been raining all morning and I could hear thunder in the distance. At about twelve-thirty, I had formed bread dough into round rolls to be used like hamburger buns. While the bread was rising I decided to clean the living room. I had pulled out and cleaned behind my husband's chair and was cleaning behind the table beside it when the electricity went off. For quite a while I expected that the lights would come on at any moment but the power outage continued.

I was planning to write this article when my husband left at three to go to work and I was going to talk about what I did during the past year but the electrical outage changed all that.

The weather cleared up shortly after the electricity went out and the sun came out. It was warm--over sixty degrees and climbing. It was the perfect afternoon to go outside and continue the work that I started the other day in the yard.

I raked leaves into a tarp twice and spread them on the main part of the garden. I then worked at picking up acorns to save to feed the pigs I'm planning to get this next year. At that point my husband asked me what I was doing. When I told him what I was doing he said that I must have been bored but the truth was, I was enjoying what I was doing.

Shortly thereafter however I decided to pick up black walnuts instead. I had promised a friend that I would send her some so that she could use it in her herbal concoctions and as of yet, I hadn't done that. I decided today was the perfect day to take care of that task.

At about the time my husband left for work, I realized that I had to do something about the rolls. I really didn't want to waste the rolls but I also knew that if I didn't stop them from rising above doubled, they dough wouldn't be any good so I squeezed the air out of the rolls and let them start doubling all over again. I did this another two times during the afternoon and evening.

After finishing my work outside, I started a fire in the wood stove (It's supposed to get down around freezing tonight) and my nine year old daughter asked me to play the game of life with her. She won.

After we finished the game we ate ice cream. I sat on one couch and was reading and my daughter was on the other couch reading. In order to see what I was reading I used a flashlight and my daughter used the book reading light that she got for Christmas.

The electricity finally came back on at seven-ten. It had been out for just over six hours but it reminded me of the fact that I have taken electricity for granted. I have done some things to get ready in case such an event happened but I also realized that I'm still not ready for an extended electrical outage. There are things that I can do to make such a prospect not so traumatic.

First thing I know that I need to do is to get a nonelectric can opener. We have lots of canned foods but it's difficult to do without a working can opener. That will be one of the first things to add to my emergency list.

The second thing will be to get my wood cook stove hooked up. If I'd have had the wood cook stove hooked up, I might have been able to bake the rolls in it but because it isn't, I wasn't able to do that.

The good news about the rolls was that I kept them punched down enough that when the electricity came back on, I was able to bake them in the range and they turned out just fine. Even though things done always go perfectly, sometimes everything turns out okay anyway.