The Ordeal: understanding Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs

For about the twentieth time I went in the laundry room and flipped the light switch. Nothing. There was no power, there had been no power for days actually. It was funny in an ironic way, it was a habit I guess, almost a reflex action I had grown quite used to, flipping on the light, and now it was gone.

The storm was something to behold, I guess several people were killed, I didn’t care that much about them, I was dealing with my own mess. I had to go to work, I was working as a warehouse manager and I needed to get ready for inventory. This involved all the regular standard work on top of the inventory gig. I told the owners the only way possible to make it happen was to open the purse strings for overtime, they said no.
When I first left the house after the storm, trees and power lines were down everywhere, I didn’t actually grasp how bad it was or I wouldn’t have gone “out there”, because then I had to get back. I was driving under trees across the road, under and over live power lines. Coming back, to help things out, the cops were closing all the roads. That is nice when all the local hotels are full and there is no way to even gas up because the gas stations can’t pump either with no juice. Very rapidly it starts to dawn on you how fucked everything is.

I did have a wood stove for heat and some possible cooking. Of course I didn’t really have a bunch of wood. The next morning a cold snap hit to make it really an insult-to-injury kind of cold. Normally to be really windy and stormy it isn’t that cold here, now it was. I wondered just how all the people in apartments with no insulation and no wood stove were making it. Soon there was no hot water and it was getting a little depressing. At one time the power had been connected with the local fire station and so it was a priority to get it back on. Now it seemed they had changed the lines and they had generators and things were different.
At work there was power, but no showers of course and coming home was no longer very appetizing. I learned some things. Hot coffee in the morning is a very important ritual. Light to put in contact lenses is very helpful. I began to understand Mazlow’s Heirarchy of needs much better.

I missed light the most, and then heat, after that most likely my computer and a line to the outside world, (yes I had a cell phone). It was funny but most people complained about TV the most, apparently it is impossible to raise children without one today. Recently, being snowed in for Christmas 2008, that was OK, plans with family had to be changed, we still haven’t had our Christmas roast dinner, but having light and heat, things were OK.