No electricity = OMG moment

We had a brutal storm roll through Sunday night. Winds in excess of 70 mph. Thunder lightning, rain.... all the fun stuff storms are made of. The worst part was the wind. At one point my front screen door, which was closed and had a eye-hook lock fastened, was beating against the door jamb so hard I thought it would destroy the door. It was about that time I decided the basement was a good place to be. So I grabbed a few candles and headed downstairs. Just as I got down there, the electricity went off.

Now, I've been through a lot of storms in 45 years, so this one didn't bother me. My house was built in the 1920s, so I know it's solid, and I wasn't worried about that. I've been through worse. So, 15 minutes later, when the winds calmed down and the rain had pretty much stopped, I wandered back upstairs to see what was what. It was still somewhat light out (around 8:30) so I could see a lot of branches down outside my house. I opened up my door and stepped outside to see that down the street, a tree half the size of my house was laying across the road. About 20 minutes later, a giant bulldozer came and pushed it off the street, along with one a tick closer to my house that I hadn't noticed.

The OMG moment? Well, that came about an hour and a half later, as I was still without electricity and was BORED OUT OF MY FREAKING SKULL! I didn't have enough candles to make it bright enough to read without getting a migraine, so I spent all that time going from upstairs to downstairs, petting a cat that had taken up position on each level, or going outside to have a smoke. I've never been so bored in my life! I was so bored, I was wishing I hadn't spent all weekend cleaning so I could have done it then. Thank god the temperature dropped from about 95 at 7 p.m. down to about 70 during the storm.

So what did I learn from all of this? The biggest thing I realized was just how much of life depends on electricity. I couldn't watch TV. I couldn't read without the lights. If it had been hot still, I wouldn't have been able to stay cool. I couldn't get on the computer. I couldn't even make a darn phone call, as my phone system is wireless, and without electricity it gives me an 'out of range' message. So all I could do was wonder aimlessly around the house wishing the electricity would come back on.

At 10 p.m., I'd had enough. Knowing that if the electricity came back on, my alarm clock would reset itself and I would hear the shrill call of my alarm in the morning, I went to bed. Thank God the storm didn't hit at say, 5 p.m. I don't know what I would have done to keep myself amused for that long.

Heading to work Monday morning, it was amazing seeing all the destruction that a 15-20 minute storm had caused. My block got off relatively unscathed compared to other neighborhoods. More storm are scheduled for the week, so I'm just hoping they're a bit tamer, and my electricity doesn't go out again.

'Til next time.....