The lights came on one street over

At 9:15 this morning the house behind ours came on. I heard it before I saw it: a fridge compressor, a furnace fan, then a second fridge, three houses in a row on Cedar Street. Ours was dark at 9:15 and it is dark now, at 8:40.

The board at the hall

The whiteboard was 31 streets on Day 24, nine restored. This morning it was 24 restored, five with a crew on them, two with nothing beside them at all. Mine had a crew number for the first time since the storm. I read the line six times, hat in my hands.

Two trucks at the corner at 11:40, one bucket and one pickup. The man on the bucket chalked the transformer number on the pole and said Thursday, then Thursday or Friday, hand flat and moving sideways, the hand for a number a man is repeating and not one he knows. Day 18 cost me three days of conserving on a rumour from a shop counter. I wrote Thursday on the card with (not confirmed) under it.

Their line ends at the service drop. The mast on my roof, the weatherhead, the meter base — mine. If the ice bent the mast they restore the street and leave me dark, and the fix is an electrician. At 12:40 I looked at the mast for the first time in eleven years. Straight, two of four bracket screws.

At 12:10 a man with a clipboard asked one question at each door: is anything in this house feeding your panel. A panel fed backwards puts 240 V on a line a crew has switched off and earthed, and the crew is up the pole with their hands in it. The man across the street said no and it was true — cords for twenty-nine days, not a panel. Two houses on this block I do not know about. Neither does the clipboard.

What breaks when it comes back

The light is not the problem. Everything that turns has sat in 5 °C air for a month, and the return is not a clean 120 V. Ready.gov's line is that power may return with momentary surges or spikes.

At 1:05 I switched the 100 A main off at the top of the panel. It has done nothing since Day 0, but on Thursday the house comes back on their switch or mine. The plan in pencil under it: main off until the street is steady an hour, then one circuit at a time, furnace first because heat, fridge last, because a compressor full of cold oil is what trips and what can wait.

The water heater is 50 L and empty since Day 20. Lit with no water in it, it is a scrap tank. Filled first, cold inlet open, a hot tap upstairs open for the air; full when water runs at the hot side.

The boiler needs a service before it runs, and at 2:30 I found out why. The condensate line is the clear plastic one from the trap to the floor drain, 200 mm, split along a bend. It froze in the second week, when the basement was 3 °C and I was upstairs worrying about the kitchen. There is scale in the trap and the flue has not been looked at in two years and four months. Health Canada says indoor fuel appliances release carbon monoxide when they are not vented or maintained properly, and names the blocked flue. Not lit until a man with a ticket has been down there.

The fridge has been off twenty-nine days, door shut. Mouldy in the gasket, a black line all the way round, and in the drain trough I have never cleaned. It gets washed, run empty a day with a thermometer in it, and nothing goes back until it reads 4 °C.

The split pipe is still open, 22 mm, north wall. The town has pressure and I have a hole. The hardware store on Mill Street opened this morning; at 4:20 there was a queue at the counter and no 15 mm push-fit couplings on the shelf. Everybody on this block has a split pipe and the empty shelf is the proof.

I opened the main at 11:20, one and a half turns, to hear whether the town had pressure on it. Ninety seconds. Three litres went into the wall through the split and came out below as a patch on the hall ceiling 400 mm across, and I stood under it with the torch knowing what it was. Day 25 has it written down: main off, first hour, the one thing I would run for in bare feet. I wrote that. Then I opened it, to listen.

She came down at 11:35 and looked at the tray. "You opened it." Not a question. Then she got the second tray, put it under the other end, and said nothing else all day.

Eight minutes

The arena on Mill Street opened its showers at 2 p.m. 1.4 km, six stalls, hot water because the arena heats its own. I queued forty minutes with a towel and a bar of soap I have carried since Day 17. The sign says eight minutes.

I took eleven. At nine a woman knocked and said six people were behind me, and I said sorry and stayed in two more. The dog waited 1 hour 40 minutes on the step and drank 400 mL of his litre after.

At home it would be 50 L I do not have, through a boiler unserviced, which is what put it 1.4 km away.

What it was worth. My left hand stops at about 20 degrees at the first two knuckles and will not close on a bar of soap. My ribs are visible. I looked at my own arm, then washed my hair twice, the only extravagance in twenty-nine days that cost no water off my card.

$6.43 a day for twenty-nine days is $186.47, the small number. The pharmacy 12 km east had its sign lit tonight, and the bottle in my inside pocket has been empty since the morning of Day 17 and weighs 14 g, and a lit sign does not put anything in it. She has lost weight she could not afford, and counts her pens twice a day, and the count does not go up because Cedar Street has power. She has been right since Day 9, and on Thursday she gets a lit street and a cold garage with three pens in it.

On Day 25 I got the middle of my mother's prayer wrong in the basement. On Day 27 I wrote that I had stopped. Both are true, in the way that saying words you no longer mean and not saying them are both not praying. Tonight I said thank you out loud in my own kitchen, torch off, to the room. The dog lifted his head. Nothing answered, I did not expect it to, and I said it anyway.

What if Thursday comes and the street is lit and we are the one dark house on it. Then it is the mast or the meter base, and an electrician at a price I find out when I ask. The car has 1 L in it and the walk east is 12 km. His number has been on the fridge door eleven years and I have never looked. It is on the index card now, under Thursday.

Water: 16 L this morning, 8.6 L out at the card number, 7.6 L back in — 8 L in two jugs from a tap on Cedar Street, minus 0.4 L on the ice at the gate. 15 L tonight. The advisory stands, so anything going in a mouth gets boiled, 30 g of gas for 5 L.

What I should have had on day zero

• A 15 mm push-fit coupling and a pipe cutter, $12, so the main can go back on the day the street does.
• A transfer switch, installed by an electrician, before the first generator on this block.
• A gas fitter's number on the fridge door, instead of the pizza place.
• A fridge thermometer, $6, and 300 mm of clear hose, $3, for a line that splits in a cold basement.