The Touchwood Project

Another Power Off experience, this time from urban New York. Kerrilee, who wrote our first guest post on how to make a recycled magazine basket, had this to say…
-Rachel

Greetings!

I figure, since this is my second guest post, I should probably introduce myself a bit.

My name is Kerrilee, and I met Malcolm & Rachel on my six-week travels this past summer. They were awesome, and let me stay longer than I had originally asked to stay.

So, now that I’ve been back home in New York, teaching preschool and hanging with my girlfriend (Melissa) and cat (Pan), I’m happy to say that they’re still awesome and inviting me into their lives and this project.

Here’s a play-by-play of what Power-Off Weekend looked like from this side of the Atlantic.

Setting the scene

Where we live: a 900 square foot, 4th-floor apartment, 15 miles north of Manhattan, with a view of the Empire State Building from the bedroom window in the winter when there’s no leaves on the trees.

We have a fireplace, steam radiators that sound like angry birds, and oddly placed electrical outlets (the building was constructed in the 1920′s… the original brochure advertised the “amazing cross-breezes” for those renting apartments before air conditioning. As someone too lazy and uninterested to walk an air-conditioner up four flights of stairs twice a year, I can confirm it’s a valid selling point. But I digress.)

The great Cooky Party

On Friday night, one of our best friends came in from Philadelphia for the Cooky Party Melissa and I were hosting on Saturday. It’s a non-holiday specific party where our friends get together, bake cookies, and then gorge ourselves on the sweet treats, alternated with something salty, like Mexican food. A day of friends and food… couldn’t be better.

 

Everyone knew that there would be no lights and no KitchenAid mixer at this year’s party (but we would leave the fridge on). Upon arrival on Friday night, our friend reassured her husband over the phone that she had indeed charged it before she left, and it would not die before she returned on Sunday.

Turning off the electricity

At 10:30 Friday night, I started playing with circuits while Melissa and our friend called out what turned off.

Until that day, it had never even occurred to us that we had a big ‘ole circuit breaker thing and that we could use it to turn stuff off without unplugging it. The process went something like,

me, standing on chair to reach circuits: ok, what now?

Melissa and friend: Ummm, the light’s out on the stereo.

me: got it. [label circuit, flick next circuit.] ok, what now?

Melissa and friend: Nothing?

me: [flick next circuit] and now?

Melissa and friend: … still nothing.

Turns out, we have a lot of useless circuits. Half of them, actually. Also, three out of our six rooms are on the same circuit, and the bathroom isn’t on any circuit. Good to know. Lights out.

Waking up Saturday morning

So, now we’re at Saturday morning. I get woken up by a bag of coffee beans in my face. Melissa wants to make coffee, and the coffee grinder has one of those pesky plugs.

I suggest the mortar and pestle… but Melissa and our friend decide to hit Starbucks on their way to pick up a few last minute items for the day.

While they were out, Melissa calls me to ask for a store’s phone number (she was getting her new iPhone that day). Nope, can’t use the Internet to look it up – call 411! [the information equivalent of the emergency 911 number here in the States.]

At 11 am, friends arrive for the all-day baking fest. Our oven is gas, so we’re not technically cheating (yay!).

 

 

 

However, disaster strikes: Melissa goes to take out the flour, and the lid slips off the container, spilling flour all over the carpet and one of our guests. Oh no!

Breaking the rules

We’re faced with a choice: get the Dustbuster, or have flour ground
into the carpet and spread all over the place during the course of the day. So, the Dustbuster became our one moment of breaking our own rules over the weekend.

Later, a guest who has been at previous Cooky Parties commented, “You know, it’s nice – without the KitchenAid, we can hear each other better.” And that was even with the holiday music, provided by a battery-operated iHome!

 

Evening sets in

As the sun went down, the last cookies were rolled out by “flashlight” (aka torch-light).

 

After everything was baked, we lit the candles for the 2nd night of Hannukah, some other candles for extra light, and a fire in the fireplace, and read aloud from a book parodying Twilight while we feasted on tea & cookies.

My own moment of forgetfulness about the lack of electricity came when we were setting up for the two friends who were sleeping over.

One friend called the couch, and for the other, I said, “Oh, we’ll blow up the air mattress…” and got as far as having the plug in my hand before I realized that we could not, in fact, blow up the air mattress. Instead, we stripped all the cushions off the back of the couch and the one cushy chair, and made a makeshift mattress to put underneath the air mattress. It ended up being quite comfortable after all!

Sunday morning

The next morning, our French press, mortar and pestle, and I worked together to provide three cups of coffee.

Then our friends departed, and Melissa and I spent the rest of our day in a very relaxed state of electricity-lessness.

While Melissa watched “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” on the battery power of her laptop, I half-watched while I rearranged the two power strips in the living room into “always” and “sometimes” stuff, so that when the power returned, we could leave the power off to the things we used less often (like the Wii), and only turn that strip on when needed.

When the movie and rearranging were finished, we both read for the rest of the day.

As it got dusky, I used a flashlight/torch jammed into the hood of my sweatshirt as a reading lamp, and then we used our most reflective candleholders to read in bed (sorry Malcolm, there isn’t really an abundance of shells and reeds in Westchester! if only). We, too, went to bed without flipping the circuits back on, and only did so Monday morning.

A bit of reflection

As the end of the Weekend drew near, Melissa commented, “Awesome! Now I can stop automatically reaching for the lightswitch and have nothing happen.”
Meanwhile, I found myself thinking about how nice it was not to know exactly what time it was. The time was divided into “day, dusk, night,” and there was no pressure to know the hour. I also thought, when a lull came over the Cooky Party, how easy it must have been to be on a ‘farmer’s schedule’ before electricity; we all seemed to get tired around 8 PM, and only pushed to stay awake because our group of friends does not get many opportunities to spend time together and it would be silly to squander it. Between the ease of going to bed when it’s dark, and the expense of using candles for a lengthy period in the evening, it makes sense to rise early and retire to bed early.

 

Coda

A few days after the Weekend, Melissa and I we were talking in the bedroom – but not going to bed yet – and since we weren’t reading or doing something that required light, I turned off the bedside lamp. As the light from outside filtered in, Melissa noticed the pattern of the planes taking off from LaGuardia. It was “rush hour” for transatlantic flights, so we spent the next 10 minutes peacefully watching the different flight patterns created as many planes flew over our area. We have lived in this apartment for three years, knowing we had a view of New York City, and never noticed this before, simply because we were never looking at the right angle and with the right light (in this case, none of our own).

It’s little things, small baby steps, that make all the difference in how we experience our lives.

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