Electricity

We tried living in the country eleven years ago. I hated it, and we were only three miles out of town. I know several people who grew up in the country and have moved into town and they dream of moving back. They miss the peace and quiet of living in the country. Now this is a town of 400 people; it can't be that loud.
I imagine where you grow up has a lot to do with the preference. We moved all over the western part of the the U.S. during my childhood. My mom's family lives in Dallas Or. so it was a kind of base for us. We lived there for my childhood's most stable five years. Somedays I feel the Northwest pulling at me. Mybe it is time time to take the kids to Oregon for a visit. Over the years and states there were a few times we lived on farms, or in cities but for the most part it was small towns for us.
One summer we lived in a really small town in Nevada. It was a small mining town called Round Mountain, if I remember it right. We weren't there long enough to leave much of an impression on my eight year old brain, but I remember enjoying that summer. We had a spot in the trees that we could hide and imagine ourselves in a fort. One day we sat in there enjoying the cool air and eating too many cherries. To this day I can't eat more than one or two cherries at a time. That was one really long night.
I am rambling again. I was simply going to mention that I preferred living in town because; one, we were only out of electricity for a couple of days; and two, when our power does go out we still have water. I was talking to some freinds last night who live several miles out of town and are still without electricity and may be out for another week.
My neighbor is an elderly woman with a lifeline monitor. Sunday morning lifeline called us and asked if we would go check on her. I had not been out of my house much since the snow started. Saturday morning I had walked to work, but while what was pelting my face looked like snow, it was not. Jagged little pieces of ice sting in a way snow never could. We had to hop here fence since the gates were frozen to the ground by the layer of ice and blocked in by the snow. Lane went over a little later and shoveled her path and unblocked her gates for here. Inside her house was nice and warm, unusual because most of us were without heat. She told us that when she had her new heater installed last year she refused to have a blower installed. She did not want to be without heat during power outages. This has gotten me rethinking a few things.
I plan to put my new house on all electricity and not even run a natural gas line. The main reason for this is that I have always been afraid of gas explosions. Lee is fourteen and an excellent cook, yet I still won't let him use the stove if I'm not home. I prefer cooking on gas stoves and the gas oven came in handy when our heater was broke. It never dropped below 60 degrees in here. I plan to have a wood stove in the new house though so this isn't a big problem. I would also like a convection oven, but even the gas ones won't work without electricity. I may need to think about not putting all of my energy eggs into one slightly unreliable basket. I have thought about maybe getting off of the grid someday, but that is a long way off.