Three Beautiful Things 12-17-2025: Whistling and Howling Wakes Me Up, Power Out Soup On, Power Restored

 1. I don't claim that the times I'm going to mention in this post are precise, but they're in the ballpark and this is a blog not a court of law! 

I went to bed Tuesday night knowing that high winds were coming on Wednesday, and I knew that on Tuesday the winds had been blowing pretty strong. 

From inside our house, we know winds are growing strong when they whistle and howl. We don't have belongings outside that rattle, no wind chimes that sing, and no trees to snap or shed branches, so I gauge wind force by the wind's own sound. 

By around 5 a.m., the whistling and howling woke me up and I knew I wouldn't go back to sleep, so I got up and did a few small things in anticipation of losing our power: I fed Gibbs, I fed Copper, I turned up the heat,  I hoped to submit my Wordle results to Christy and Carol, and I started writing a blog post. 

2. Around 7:30, Symphony Hall cut out. The lights went off. The furnace stopped. 

I reported the outage, signed up for Avista alerts, and decided to hibernate for a while and went back to bed. 

It started to look like this might be a more than three or four hour outage (I was right!). 

We have a gas range and I don't need electricity to light the burners, so I made myself a hot coffee and I began to gather ingredients to make a chicken-bean-vegetable soup, knowing that eating hot soup would help keep me warm. 

That worked. 

I kept my phone charged by taking it out to the car and juicing it up in the driveway. 

I stayed in contact with my sisters, Debbie, Stu, and Ed. 

Copper and Gibbs took everything in stride. They seemed pretty comfortable with the house temperature being at about 60 degrees. Gibbs braved a few short trips to do his business in the back yard. Copper seemed content to rest and sleep on a bath towel in the bathroom. 

3. Christy came over to fill a thermo-cup with hot water and gave me some hand and feet warmers. 

I put a blanket on the couch for Gibbs.

I went to bed much earlier than usual, having put on a hoodie, sweat pants, and heavy socks, all of which kept me comfortable. 

Copper joined me -- I guess I was better company than a towel on the floor. 🤣🤣🤣

At 4:06 a.m. suddenly the light by my bed came on. 

I heard Alexa make some kind of noise. 

The furnace kicked on. 

I could use my Sirius/XM app to put Symphony Hall on my wireless speaker. 

Stu was up early and messaged me, asking what was happening. (He lives in Kootenai County.)

I gave him the good news: power restored.

We agreed: Avista has stalwart workers. 

They do the Lord's work.