Continuing from the last post: Between figuring out food and meals… I couldn’t really feel the impact of the strikes [Natalie was referring to] on Tuesday November 15th.
On 11/23/22 – a Wednesday – we were in the middle of a scheduled blackout that had started at noon when a fresh attack on Kyiv started.
[I’ll note here that now in June of 2023, after daily strikes all last month, this feels almost odd to be so concerned. But back then, the cold weather, air defense being less able to defend and thus the hitting of targets, and the blackouts made the thought of incoming missiles cause a whole different set of feelings.]
We watched, and things seemed initially tense and then pretty quickly seemed relatively normal. (‘Watched’ = looking out our various windows to see how people were reacting, behaving.) I began to feel stress as the hours went on, mainly thinking about the refrigerator and freezer.
[This was happening on the day before U.S. Thanksgiving; we were not having a TG meal as electricity and cooking were already pretty stressful and it didn’t make sense to expand that stress, even for a wonderful reason.]
By that point we already knew that some power station in Darnitsya (the Left Bank, not super far [yes, it wasn’t very close to us, but also not very far away either]) had been hit and that this blackout could go on for a while. Before nightfall – 3:30 or 4 these days! – we also lost all water. (We never have hot water when the power is out.)
We also had no cell service, so in that regard, we were completely cut off from communicating with anyone here or anywhere else, from news, etc. That was another stressor for me, and I think for Mark too.
We had systematically been getting candles, flashlights, and batteries, and I stocked up on clean and utility water. We weren’t doing well on the food front, not yet finding good options that work without refrigeration or cooking.
It was relatively cold outside but not cold enough on the balcony [enclosed] to make that a fridge substitute [yet]. We considered using the back-up powerbank thing for the fridge, but worried that draining it to run the fridge and still having no power might not be good [a little late for being economical, we bought a backup powerbank which could run our computers, phones, a lamp or two].
It was good we didn’t do that. From noon Wednesday to midnight Thursday [36 hours] without power meant the fridge and freezer both had to be emptied into the trash.
[I’ll continue this post in part three, but those 36 hours were both very, very quiet and very intense.]
McDonnels in Ukraine 