+1000
It’s true, we just don’t want to admit it sometimes but you wrote the truth!
I get too anxious to sit still, too.
Also, it’s normalcy bias that creeps in during a power failure. At my house that’s what happened two winters ago with a wicked, freezing temps windstorm blew through here. I knew it was coming. We’d been warned for two days.
That Sunday morning I started cooking early. As the day crept on, winds got very bad, power outages were showing up all over central Indiana.
I had hot food cooked and ready, but around 4 pm, when OUR power finally went out, hubby had NO patience for anything I’d prepared and got irritated at with my idea of staying by the fireplace eating what I had ready. We also found out the hard way when the stored batteries we had were not good anymore , too.
....after a couple of hours, he’d had enough...we got in the car found an open Restaraunt (it might have been a Texas Roadhouse I think?) and waited, along with the other people without power, for a table.
He hates the quiet, “sitting in silence” sort of thing when there’s no power.
I guess that’s “one way” to get to go out to eat lol. I’ll admit though, I was kind of bummed out all my prep efforts didn’t matter much.
I consider those days, and time spent shopping with SB as practice for sitting in a deer stand all day. LOL
However I do admit I do enjoy scenery type stuff. I like sitting on the back deck with a little wine and a fire watching the sun go down and the shadows creeping up the trees. We did the same thing when we went to Gatlinburg, TN sat on the veranda at the hotel, a fire, wine, watching the clouds in the valleys.
Plain ol' playing cards. An actual physical deck of cards. So you can play solitaire, hearts, spades, poker, without a computer.
Plain ol' pencils, and some printer paper. Let the children draw, upgrade to crayons, and color pencils. Even teens, might surprise you.
BTW for informational purposes: back in the day, women used fences to "hang" cloths on. Draped them over. And in the winter put them on hangers around the fire to dry. 'Course having to use a rub board (what, you don't have a rub board???) and no. 3 washtub, was a lot of work, so people wore their clothes for more than one day.
Also if you're having to heat your water on a fire, something other than an electric stove, or electric hot water heater, better consider getting a couple of (metal) dish pans. Heating water for dishes or clothes or baths, and doing it a pot at a time, you've never get it hot enough.
Since we are going that way: also consider getting a couple three wash tubs in different sizes. Smaller ones for washing the harvest, beans, peas, corn etc. and Larger ones for clothes, and taking baths. Fill the tub about half full in the morning let it sit all day in the sun, and take your bath near sun down. Place the bath tub somewhere in the yard, where it will get full sun all day, and out of view from the road. Have a couple of buckets (metal 1 and 1/2 gallon size) for rinsing, sitting close.
Hope that helps.