Making The Best Of It

Suzanne Bedard and her children have been taking “bucket showers.”

First, she sits a tote in the bathtub and fills it with about four gallons of water, collected from her neighbor’s garden hose. Next, she uses a camp stove to heat two quarts of water to boiling. Then she pours it in.

Then someone gets in the tote, applies soap, and uses a Tupperware container to rinse.

“We’re clean,” said Bedard, of Gales Ferry, as she did laundry Thursday at James Laundromat and Dry Cleaners in Groton.

Connecticut Light & Power reported more than 177,000 homes still without power statewide as of 9 p.m. on Thursday, including 3,245 in Groton.

Some families held off doing laundry for days hoping power would return, but by Thursday had to give in. Norma Hvarre, an employee at the Laundromat, started seeing people from Mystic, Ledyard, Stonington, Pawcatuck and Westerly, R.I.

“It’s just jammed all the time,” she said.

The Bedard family has a well, so no power means no water. A neighbor let the family run a garden hose to the front door so Bedard could fill totes to bathe, wash dishes and flush the toilet. She and her husband have three teenagers.

He works as a master mechanic and has been charging their cell phones using a portable car battery charger.  Another neighbor with a generator let them hook up their refrigerator.

“We don’t have a choice in this,” she said. “Honestly, we’ve been fortunate.”

Nancy Pelletier, of Montville, who also had to give in and wash clothes, works at Lawrence and Memorial Hospital, and said has been eating and showering at work. She said she and her husband, who is retired, are trying to make the best of it.

 “We have to actually talk to each other when I get home, because there’s no T.V.,” she said.

“We’re just starting to like each other,” her husband, Ron Pelletier said.

Liz Power, of Mystic, learned from the CL&P website that the family wouldn’t have power until Monday.  She has a job in Boston and an apartment there, and said her family would probably leave for the holiday weekend.

She said she knows others are worse off.

“I’ll take no electricity and no water for a few days because we don’t have any damage and no one was hurt,” she said. But she added, “Ask me on Monday, if we have no power, and see how I feel then.”