Power Outage

Saturday evening we were out by the pool. It was an ungodly hot day, and the air still steamed even though it was nighttime. My kid and I played Otter in the water and my husband watched lazily from the side, beer in hand.

NOT our pool.

I began to notice that my kid was getting harder to see. I looked up, and the sky had turned a weird, greenish-black color. We realized that one doozey of a storm was about to erupt.


We rushed inside, leaving a trail of drips behind us. The sky got blacker and - twistier - and all of a sudden - it struck.

Wind slammed the house along with a deafening clap of thunder. Rain blasted the windows. The dark sky lit up with forks of lightning, and when they passed, the house stayed in darkness.


The power was out.


When you lose electricity, the house moans a defeated "Ahhhhhh" as it settles into silence. The storm had been so violent and fast-moving that the sun came back out.


Our reaction was one of disbelief when we looked out the windows. Everything had been blown down - chairs, umbrellas, tree limbs, our cool little fig tree... It was amazing how much damage had racked up in less than ten minutes.


Time to hunt for candles! I pulled out jars, old birthday candles, anything I could find. My husband and I told each other, for the fiftieth time, that it really was time to get a decent flashlight. 

We settled in the family room and played Uno by candlelight. Our kid won both games. Up to bed, since she was yawning by this time, and she insisted on sleeping with us in the deep darkness (can't blame her.)


Hub and I went out again to survey the wreckage. It was still hot, and I jumped back in the pool to cool off. He joined me and we swam in darkness lit only by the little reading lamp I usually keep by the bed.


The woods are "dark, and deep" and they have a lot of noises going on when there's a power outage, let me tell you. All kinds of things rustle around in there. Without AC units going or the hum of TV's, nature gets really loud, really fast. 


I was refreshed but creeped out. We dried off again and headed to bed.


And that's when it got HOT, and not in a good way. Keep in mind that 


a) I'm a menopausal woman and don't deal with heat well anyway
b) We had a kid in our bed who seems to heat up to lava temp whilst sleeping
and c)No AC, no fan


and you can perhaps imagine the misery. My husband fell asleep right away; I was not so lucky.

I got up and went down to the basement. It was cool down there, but I could hardly sleep among the boxes. Plus, weren't there spiders and bugs down there? Yeah, not happening.


Ended up on the couch with open windows, gasping for a breeze. Eventually I did drift off.


For those who live without power in the heat, I salute you. My mom was pregnant in the summer - TWICE - in Arizona. In the sixties. Which means that there wasn't any AC happening in that house. And she had just moved from Ireland. How the hell did she manage that I'd like to know?


Because I couldn't even make it one night.