Four Days in the Dark

Playing in the background: Olympic snowboarding

Pardon me for being a little late with this week's post, but I've been IN THE DARK FOR FOUR FUCKING DAYS. Thanks, I needed to say that. In case you've been hiding under a rock lately, The Worst Storm Ever To Hit The Dallas Area In Recorded History has just finished plowing through here, leaving a mess the size of Texas and just incidentally knocking out our electricity. For four fucking days. Yes, I know this here's a religious establishment but it was four fucking days. Four fucking days. Four. Fucking. Days. Get the picture?

It wasn't just us, of course. Our neighbors on both sides also got to join us in the Wonderful World of No Electricity. But the ones across the street didn't. They had power the whole time. Pox on them. Well, that's not their fault. Maybe they kept their trees trimmed or something.

So those of us who can't really afford to bail and go to a hotel room ended up doing what cave men did in the days before electricity; hunkering around the fire (place) and saying ug a lot. We do have a fireplace, of course, which was what made this merely a massive inconvenience as opposed to completely intolerable. I camped out on the couch for three nights, doing possibly permanent damage to my spine and avoiding real sleep almost entirely in the process, and kept an eye, or a nose maybe, on the fire. (Fireplaces are scary. If things escape from them they get really scary.) Joan, always the hardier soul, still slept in her room, albeit with the door open and lots of extra blankets. During the day, when we had actual light, we did fun things like the dishes and sweeping and tiptoeing around trying not to trip over anything in the dark. And read books. A lot of books. I knocked through "Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4D" (highly recommended) and Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" (I haven't finished it yet but so far it's not bad.)

Let's see, what else did we do. We ate a lot of take out food. We also took out a lot of food, as in everything in the fridge, to the trash can. We shared space on the sofa with all three cats, which were delighted that we were A. both home (we couldn't get out of the driveway) and B. huddled close together (cats are sluts for body heat.) We took showers (we did have hot water) by flashlight and candlelight. It was kind of like camping, minus the neat stories around the campfire. Okay, there were a few of those too. And I guess it could have been fun if it wasn't so mind-numbingly dull and irritating. We also monitored our electric company, Oncor, on Twitter to see when, oh when, the great denizens of power would get around to little old us. Was it my imagination or did they handle all the rich neighborhoods first? Must have been my imagination, I'm sure they'd never discriminate.

Okay, I'm calming down and wiping the foam off my face. But I did miss the Olympic opening ceremonies, which if you're me is kind of like showing up late for your own bat mitzvah. And speaking of Olympics, I'm going back to them now. Electricity is a beautiful thing.