Tonight's the night the lights went out in not Georgia but the Holmestead. Tonight the electric went out at 4pm much to my dismay.
My Aspy son had a meltdown due to there not being a light and my Autistic son wanted to eat. Thanks to modern electric appliances I could not cook. Our gas oven requires electric to maintain the flame.
I have a power inverter that I hook up to the garden tractor for a small generator. Unfortunately the oven pulled too much wattage. I was only able to run one light or one small appliance. Unfortunately it wasn't powerful enough to run the toaster oven or microwave. We could run the tv, a computer or a light. We opted for the light to finish homework.
During this time I was also able to develop a new test for ADHD. Give a child a flashlight and watch where the light falls and where they are looking. The child with ADHD will be looking to the in one direction and the light will be anywhere but in that direction. I also noticed that as the child talks the light moves in relation to their words.
With two ADHD children and several flashlights the front of our house looked like a disco or a scene from a prison break movie. The lights were gyrating and flashing all over the windows and off every surface in the house. All this while they talked for half an hour about what story to read out loud. By the time they got done arguing about what to read nobody wanted to read out loud to them.
My ASPY son had a full meltdown going due to the fact that after an hour and a half the battery on the garden tractor started to need more power from the alternator thus robbing the output to the inverter. Long story short the power inverter stopped powering the light. Suddenly he was going to die of starvation and boredom.
As my son was screaming our Autistic son wanted food and my two ADHD children were bouncing off the walls while shining lights everywhere but where it would be helpful. Mostly they shined the lights in my eyes while they talked nonstop over the screams of my ASPY son.
Once the electric came back and we could cook and see, everyone started fighting about who was being a baby and acting up. The infighting did not stop until everyone had something to eat and were separated to opposite ends of the house.
The Earth Hour has nothing on our household we were without electric for 4 1/2 hours and it turned into "The Lord of the Flies".
Yep a nice quiet evening without electronic noise and distractions really brought us together.
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