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Yesterday Steve and I brought our children to Spokane for Thanksgiving. A 3:00 am power outage, a 4:55 am ferry, driving rain, a snowy pass and one burnt out headlight made for a long journey, but we got here to my parent's house safely just before 11:00 am. And as much of a pain in the butt that it was to be totally packed and ready to leave by 4:40 in the morning, it was nice to get such a ridiculously early start. Even though the children didn't sleep nearly as long in the car as we had hoped for (30 minutes max?! Really , girls?), the roads were all but devoid of traffic, especially in front of us, making for a less stressful drive (one we were out of the pass, that is). And it allowed us to keep our blinders on for the majority of the drive through darkness.

Now I am sitting on the couch in the livingroom of my father's house. There are pillows behind my back, a blanket on my legs and the coffee percolator is almost done percolating. But better than all of this, even, is the sound of the massive gust of wind that go blustering by every few minutes. I love the wind; it is my all-time favorite force of nature. And yes, there were huge wind gusts at home in Kingston yesterday morning when we were getting ready to leave on our journey, but you know what the difference is? I am sitting here, in the comfort and warmth of my parent's house with the complete and absolute confidence that the power will not be going out. A confidence that I am never able to enjoy in Kingston. The fact is that Kingston looses power more than any place I have ever lived in my life. The power doesn't ususally stay out for too long, but that doesn't make it any less annoying when my coffee maker is programed to turn on at 4:oo and everything goes dark at 3:00.

That is one of the things I miss the most about Spokane - the almost total lack of power outages. Because as pretty and safe as Kingston is, home is where you don't have to race through a shower in a flashlight-lit bathroom because you know the hot water tank is going to run out quickly.