Dusty Saul's dream involves steam.

"A hot bath in a hot room," Saul said of her initial plans when the electricity returns. "We've been able to take a hot shower, but it's miserable to get out of the shower."

Since their power was zapped Sunday, Saul and her husband, Whit Smith, have been pulling limbs to the curb at their Brady Heights home.

By Friday morning, the stack was a bonfire-esque 100 feet long by roughly six feet high.

Broken by the ice storm, large limbs from towering American elms in their yard wiped out their chimney and crashed onto a backyard stable.

Decades of shade gone in matter of days.

"I'm going to grow grass now that I have sunlight," a chuckling Smith said of his struggling lawn. "You have to be optimistic."

The couple has been sleeping on a pallet near a gas fireplace.

"We're stationed in the living room," Smith said. "Everywhere else is bone cold."

Ann Matthews: Across the street, Ann Matthews pined for a way to deal with her dirty clothes.

"Laundry, laundry, it's piling up without electricity," the 80-year-old said.

With a disrupted phone line, Matthews also can't wait to get on the horn. "I didn't realize it but my social life depends on that telephone," she said.

Hudson and Keenan