Power, Paint and Rain

We have been plagued with frequent power outages this week, that coupled with increased temperatures has made it a mite bit uncomfortable. The power failures really peaked on Monday when we lost power 3 times in one day. Shortly after my last post, the lights went out again. Sigh. I really don't like going to bed at 7:30, but there's not much to do in complete darkness. Our second fluorescent lantern was lacking batteries and we had only 4 "D" batteries on hand, only half of what was required. We had our candles, of course, but it is difficult to read by candlelight for very long, so I opted to use one of the flashlights to read for awhile.

Yesterday we awoke to a nice clear morning but soon clouds began moving in. The "cold front" was coming in, bringing cooler, breezier weather. We were inspired to continue painting, so I began all the prep work. As I hauled out the roller tray and paint, I realized that we had used and discarded both rollers. Rats! I called Dennis who had a spare roller he was willing to give us and met him at his gate to receive it. His roller was for rough surfaces, however, and did not want to cover my smooth walls. I abandoned that effort, got in the car and drove down to Roland's Ferrateria across the road from our church. They had no smooth rollers so I settled for 2 semi-rough wall rollers and a replacement roller for Dennis. Back home, I quickly realized that our smooth wall was not impressed with the semi-rough rollers. Sigh. Either that or they were just of lousy quality. In any case, they clearly were not going to do the job. Don, meantime, was busily doing all the trim work with his little brush.

I was faced with a choice - give up or drive into Coxen Hole, 11 km away. Now, this may not sound like a big deal, but I have never driven into town before, and if you've been reading my blogs for awhile, you know that this can be an adventure, especially if a cruise ship is in port, and I had seen the Norwegian Pearl sail by earlier, and it happens to be Semana Sante. My determination overcame my reluctance and I bravely set off alone. Not bad driving in. I zipped into Serrano's, the island version of Ace Hardware, got 2 smooth wall rollers AND a "hurricane" oil lamp and oil. Woo hoo! This was considerably cheaper than buying 8 "D" batteries. Now I needed to turn around and head back. The road is a narrow 2 lane affair lined with sidewalks, taxis, and people everywhere. The only places to turn around are narrow driveways on one side; the ocean is on the other side. I couldn't pull in and back out with all the congestion, so I kept going, past the cruise ship dock, past the endless line of taxis and vans, past the line of drivers standing along the road, visiting while waiting for a fare. Drove probably a mile to Gravel Bay before I could safely turn around. Then I had to drive back through all that congestion before I could turn up the road out of Coxen Hole. Made it! The drive back on the main road was still not too bad, although traffic did get heavier as I approached Sandy Bay.

I got home just as the power went off again and a big rainstorm blew in. Very strong winds, very high waves, very hard rain for awhile, and oh, so nice and cool! I love the smell of rain.
I picked up painting again and these rollers did work better, but I soon discovered that this can of paint just wasn't very good quality and did not want to roll on smoothly. I really had to work at it. The color is nice though, a light turquoise. Then we realized that the one gallon was not going to be enough. Good grief. Fortunately, we had the gallon of really lousy paint - same shade - so we mixed some of that with the almost-gone paint and managed to finish the job. The rain stopped and as it got lighter, we could see that the paint had gone on thicker and shinier in some places and was very thin, almost absent in other places. Crummy paint.

We quickly ate pb&j sandwiches to avoid having to open the fridge while the power was still out and then I drove up to church to meet my friend, Tia, for a walk on the beach. It began to rain while we were sitting out on the dock talking, but it felt good. The waves were really rolling. We walked through the grounds of Anthony's Key to reach the beach and noticed many more mainlander guests there plus many more islanders playing in the water than usual. All the schools are out this holiday week. By the time I got back home, the power was back on.

I decided to make most of the dinner preparations early, while I could still see and while I still had power - just in case. It was a cool night, perfect for baking a yummy taco pizza. I make the dough from scratch - pretty tasty! Kellie hollered down the hill just as we sat down to eat. I went out to see what she wanted and she said "turn on your phone". I did and she called to see if we wanted to come up and play Wii, but we were pretty tired, ready to just sit and watch a movie or read and not really trusting the power to stay on much longer. Maybe we'll go up and play today.