The Five Stages of Living Without Power:

1. The honeymoon stage: You were expecting to lose power and you've prepared by

stocking up on a variety of scented candles and aren't you glad you did?

Because candlelight is so romantic and makes your home seem so warm and cozy

during a nasty storm. And it's the perfect time to catch up on your reading and

spend quality time with your family away from that pesky TV.

2. The rugged stage: The power is still out and the food in your freezer is

starting to thaw. But that's okay because you can fire up the grill and cook

all that meat before it spoils and share it with your neighbors. This makes you

feel rugged and outdoorsy. You delude yourself into thinking that electricity

is for wimps and living without only makes you stronger, like those pioneer

families who tamed the wild frontier. You forget that frontier families didn't

have looters, broken traffic lights and curfews to contend with.

3. The panic stage: The ice in your cooler has melted! You immediately jump in

the car and join about 200,00 other people in search of ice, hitting every

store in a 50-mile radius only to find their supplies have long since dried up.

On the radio, you hear a report that a store a half-hour away has ice. You

floor it towards the store - but horror of horrors! Your fuel gauge is on E! Oh

why, oh why didn't you fill the tank before the storm?? Two hours later, you

find yourself at the end of a 200-car line at a gas station with 10 bags of ice

that you paid $50 for melting away on your floor boards.

4. The anger stage: You can't take it anymore. You've eaten enough processed

squeezie cheese, drank more than your share of warm beer, taken too many cold

showers and spent enough "quality" time with your family to last two lifetimes.

You begin lashing out at anyone in earshot. People in the line waiting for ice,

at the gas station. The neighbors you happily shared your grilled food with

only days ago. You begin to suspect the neighbors with generators think they're

better than everyone else with their fancy electricity. Their lighted porches

seem to mock your less luminous living conditions. The people who have

electricity tell you, "Be patient because the power workers are working as hard

as they can to restore your power so stop complaining." You consider punching

them, but decide to invite them over to smell the rotting contents of

refrigerator instead.

5. The primal stage: You've stopped showering altogether. Your eyes are

narrowed and small like a moles' eyes. You hiss at sunlight. You no longer heat

up your cans of soup and ravioli, preferring to eat your meals cold. Instead of

reading, you entertain yourself by drawing stick figures on the wall and

banging pots and pans together. You speak to your family in grunts and clicks.

You begin to fashion to your clothes out of carpet remnants and your once

upright posture is so bent over that now your knuckles drag clumsily along on

the floor when you walk. Your new favorite saying? "Fire good."