Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?

The other night we had a little storm, eh? I was working in my office and was marginally aware that it was raining outside. Then I heard a thud on the roof of our screened in porch. A rather loud thud. Not like a book falling off the copy table and landing on the carpet. More like the body of a large male falling out of a commuter airplane. Then I heard another one. Possibly an adolescent or skinny twenty-something. Then another one. And another. I quickly surmised that since we don't typically have bodies falling from the sky in our neck of the woods that it was probably a branch from one of the eight thousand walnut trees we have in our yard. I realized that this could be a bad thing, so I started downstairs. About halfway down the lights went out. This was followed by three or four vain attempts of the transformer trying to re-electrify the neighborhood. How do I know this, you ask? It makes a strained arruuuuunnnnh sound. Not unlike a woman in the final throes of childbirth.

I got downstairs without breaking my neck and went to open the door to the porch. That's when I started channeling Dorothy. The curtains on the porch were whipping around like mad and rain was literally shooting through the screens. The whole porch was completely drenched and the wind was fierce. It was raining so hard I couldn't see across the street and the lightning was apocalyptic. I was trying to use a flashlight to see outside but discovered I really didn't it since the lightning was doing a kind of strobe thing. There it was. A branch the size of Dallas was lying prostrate on the ground.

I again had the debate of whether or not to wake up Ron because of the whole disorientation thing. I walked back upstairs and he was already awake, mainly because his breathing machine had stopped and his body wisely told him that there was no air getting to his lungs. Another reason I didn't want to wake him up is because his first instinct would be to go out there and cut up the fallen limb, sort through what could be used as firewood, save any potential woodworking pieces and mulch the rest. You think I'm kidding. I've twice seen him attempt similar feats during highly inclement weather. On a metal ladder no less.

Once he determined that the rest of the tree was not coming down I then began to get irritated that the power was out. I am extremely dependent on electricity when it comes to going to bed. I have to have my "Lord of the Rings" cd playing and a fan at my head. And I have to watch about an hour of TV before my eyes grow heavy. The only thing heavy that night was the level of my consternation. I finally moved my pillows to the foot of the bed in order to catch a glimpse of a breeze and eventually fell asleep. The next day I was confiding to Kate that the only time I ever want to live in the suburbs is when the power goes out. "You do live in the suburbs," she said, not without a trace of disdain in her voice since she's an urbanite through and through. "I mean the new ones because their power lines are buried," I said.

We eventually got power back at 2:31 the next afternoon. About noon I told Tyler to go out and tell those electric guys that he had a mother perishing in the house because her iron lung wasn't working and he sure as heck wasn't going to put her in his car to take her to the hospital, so they better get cracking. Of course he didn't obey me, so we sat in the house for two more hours with the drapes pulled , lying on the leather furniture because it was cool (by cool I mean in the temperature sense, although the two-piece set is quite classy). I'm sure if a total stranger walked in he would have thought he'd stumbled into a very tastefully decorated heroin den. My eyes were kind of glassy and my hair was matted to my forehead. And I had a slack jaw. A vision of loveliness to be sure.

Sometime I'll have to tell you about the time we were without power for a week. It's a real gut buster.