My electricity went out last night. No reason. I'd like to point my finger at Mother Nature again...she would deserve it; but there were no crackles of lightening...no beastly high winds....not a drop of rain. It was actually a beautifully comfortable 70ish degree day followed by the same kind of evening. My kind of weather. P E R F E C T!
Then...boom.
My son and I were sprawled out on my bed watching tv, when around 6:30 PM the whole house went silent...and dark. Everything was off. Joe and I just looked at each other. "What just happened," I said.
"It appears your electricity is out," he joked back.
"Yeah, I know. Where's the storm? What the heck?"
"Give it a few minutes Mom, this happens to me all the time. It usually comes back on in a few minutes."
"Yeah, well this doesn't usually happen here. There's usually got to be a major storm attached to it for me."
I can rationalize things in my mind if I'm looking at an obvious reason; but these 'just because' moments don't work for me. As Joe and I sat there in the dusk of the day and not much light coming in from outside, those 'few minutes' he mentioned were accumulating...and nothing had changed.
Oh Lord I hate being without electricity. I never thought much about how reliant I am on having it. A couple of horrible storms from past weeks made that obvious to everyone. I called Com Ed to report the outage; but not before Joe took a flashlight downstairs to check the fuse box...just in case. But we both knew it wasn't a fuse problem....not the WHOLE house; and I was betting my entire neighborhood was probably in the same boat.
Com Ed had already been notified of the outage in my area and were 'on it.' Estimated time of repair wasn't for two hours. Well, it could have been worse. What's two hours? Nothing like the days on end many of us experienced from the last big storm. No need to panic over things left in my refrigerator or freezer...like last time. My only hope was if their estimate was wrong, it would err on the shorter side rather than the longer.
Joe had plans to go to a friend's house for the rest of the evening, but I could see he was a little tentative leaving me in the dark....literally. There wasn't anything to do about it. Now I just had to amuse myself somehow without the comforts of technology. Oh crap, this is where I don't do well.
No tv. No lights, so reading or doing puzzles was out. No computer....argh, enough said. I could always go outside and mull over the situation like a couple of my other neighbors I saw from my window. But honestly....been there, done that.
Music...I always have my music. Yep, I would just plug myself into my CD player and relax until my world was back to normal....whatever that is.
Lying in the darkness on my bed, it was just me and my music...as it so often is with me. There I passed the time transported to other places and other personas...in a state of calm and tranquility; until I was rudely jolted back to reality by 'all things electrical.' Maybe I actually wouldn't have minded a little more time away; but lights and flashing clocks told me I was back in business...and sooner than estimated.
One thing I do know....I'm not in love with these little unscheduled surprises; and even less so these days. There could have been any number of reasons why the outage happened...an overload, some broken cables...who knows. But as far as I'm concerned, Ma Nature isn't completely off the hook on this one. She's been getting away with murder lately. ~Joy xo
