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Imagine Life without Heat, Hot Water or HBO.
Last Sunday while watching a pharma commercial on depression, the TV suddenly went dark along with the rest of the house. Since it was morning, the dark was more of a dim white – not a dim wit.
The dogs seemed rather nonplussed about the sudden return to the dark ages but then again dogs are rather nonplussed about most things, except for cats, crows and deer poop. More about Bambi leave-behinds later.
As I write this, my husband prepares to run the generator, a power source that if used back in the dark ages, would have provided ambient cave lighting and bison fondue.
Power generators run on gasoline and generate electricity, so that we can use essential items like the refrigerator for chilling beer and the toilet for flushing dead goldfish.
It’s 10 a.m. The generator still sleeps while the electricity’s still in a coma. Silence begets silence, except for the occasional outside disturbance, which doesn’t include a CT Light and Power truck.
My husband is upstairs pretending to pay the bills online, while my two mutts sleep by my feet and dream about deer poop, a dog delicacy in the northeast that resembles kernels of popcorn.
I don’t know why dogs eat deer poop or cat poop for that matter. They gobble it up like rocky road ice cream, but then again they also lick their asses. So, there you have it.
The fact that the power went out at all perplexes me since the temperature outside is a balmy 32 degrees, the wind is breathless and the sky spitless.
Thank you, God, unless God knows about my blogging addiction and has staged an intervention with CT Light and Power.
Now 11:34, hour two of my blogging detox. I wonder why the clock on my computer works, and I don’t suffer from post blog withdrawal symptoms.
There are no avatars speaking to me in strange tongues, spouting “LOLs,” “BYOBs” or “WTFs.” And I’m not air typing on Apple’s latest aerodynamically designed MacBook that is so thin and light it hovers as you type. The only problem is finding it.
The temperature in the house drops to a crisp 68 degrees, while my husband plans his power generator strategy – whether to enter the garage wearing slippers or shoes.
A toilet flushes. A decision must be imminent.
One more surge of toilet water – not eau de toilette water – ew! da toilet water – will deplete the tank, and I’ll be flush out of luck.
It is now 10:47 and I’m still baffled why the clock on my laptop works as the battery slips another notch to 75% power… make that 74%. Soon I’ll be forced to write by hand, a travesty, since I learned cursive writing by copying doctor scripts.
My husband joins me in the living room after taking a shower – I wonder how many flushes remain – and fiddles with the antennae on a wind up solar radio. Another mystery, like the laptop battery.
“No need to fire up the generator,” he says. “The power will be back on at 12:30.”
He knows this not because he’s psychic. A reliable source from the power company, a recorded voice, told him so. He continues talking now about moving somewhere warm (with me). I continue tapping the keyboard before the battery runs out.
I toss him what I think will be a verbal grenade. “You’re annoying me,” I say. But it’s just a dud.
He misinterprets my tone for bawdy talk when in fact it’s “bitch.” Once the “bitch” sinks in, he steps outside and starts breaking ice with a hoe.
Has your spouse broken ice with a hoe lately?
