A friend from curling recently expressed a need for a dogsitter a while ago, and I, who constantly lives in fear of never being able to afford a basic life in this economy, jumped at the chance to make some money while looking after two beautiful dogs. The dog owners were going away for three days, so I packed my laptop, my Switch, my phone, and some clothes, and went over. The first full day of sitting was the Saturday.
The morning was fine. After being woken up at 6:30 to some borks I napped in the 10am sun. Then I wrote and published a blog post. At 1pm, I microwaved leftover pizza, and kept an eye on the clouds outside as a storm was coming. Less than five minutes after my last slice was out, the rain and winds began, and right away, the power cut. The storm was mild and didn’t last that long. The dogs didn’t even seem too fazed by the thunder. Across town, my parents experienced harsher winds.
Like a normal person, I expected the power to be back on soon, especially after that pitiful storm. But it did not, and after an hour, I was bored. My Switch had 12% battery when I brought it (I intended to charge while I played), and without wifi and charge, my laptop was basically useless. Only my phone with a little bit of data was functional, but the battery could only hold on for so long.
I took another nap, and was very unhappy to find upon waking that the power was still not back and my data wasn’t working. Aaaand text messages to my parents weren’t going through either. All afternoon and evening we’d get delayed texts, low bars, and choppy calls. We later found out Bell (the phone service provider) was having an outage, probably related to the storm.
Needless to say, I was not living my best life. But I found a random book called Fairytale shoved in a drawer, and for the first time maybe in my entire life, I read a whole book in one day. When the sun set, I read by lantern light. It wasn’t even a great book, but it was all I had to pass the time. Well, that and some tug-of-war with various dog toys.
Without power, I couldn’t cook anything so I had snacks for dinner. It was fine. The change in the day’s routine made it so I wasn’t too hungry anyway. There was a plaza with a few restaurants nearby, and I had my boyfriend call to see if they were open. They were not. I couldn’t call myself on account of having a phone at 10% and a data plan that wasn’t working. My father ended up bringing me my powerbank around 9pm to save my dying phone.
The power didn’t come back on until 1:45pm the next day. That’s 24 hours and 15 minutes I spent living alone like a pioneer in someone else’s home. It was boring and inconvenient, but it was no one’s fault, and there are worse things that could happen (there are people in surrounding areas who still don’t have power back). My boyfriend popped some allergy pills and came over the next day with his fully charged Switch so I at least wasn’t bored out of mind two days in a row. And the dog owners decided to come home a day early, so I got to sleep in my own bed sooner than originally expected.
One really nice thing about this experience was that I had several people reach out and ask if I needed anything. Aside from being hella bored and eating a lot of junk food, I was truly totally fine, but it’s nice that people other than my parents cared and were willing to help.
I’m not someone to drink much, and I don’t care to drink alone, but the dog owners had left me some Smirnoff Ice, so that Saturday night, I cracked one open. I deserved it.
I’m supposed to dogsit again in a few weeks. I’ll be bringing a book and a fully charged Switch just in case. I think it’s good advice no matter where you go or what you do: always plan for something to do that doesn’t involve electricity because you never know when you’ll be in a very boring situation.
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Coolbeans4 
Yup. Prepare like Girl Scout, always. Cause ya never know!