Cheeky Wisdom: The Blessings of Absolutely No Power

A power pole was already leaning badly near a school. The school had been undergoing some renovations, so there were building materials strewn about. Coupled with rain and hail, windstorms like this one can cause monkey bats to fly! A few of these “monkey bats” were apparently flown into the leaning pole near the school, causing it to snap in several places. It happened to be a feeder pole, which means it was the source of electricity for an entire neighborhood. Our neighborhood. The eponymous “they” are replacing and repairing said pole now.

In the meantime, we in the neighborhood experienced the following:

• Complete darkness. I’ll hand it to my housemate. She had foreseen the need to purchase several battery-operated indoor lanterns a few years ago. So I could get up and pretend to look presentable the next day. The fact that I could no more see if I looked like a reasonable human or Bill the Cat by lantern light was inconsequential.
• No television. For my housemate, this is anathema. For me, I’m able to write a few posts! Whoot!
• No Internet. Uh, oh. That can’t be good. I do a LOT of work online. But it gets worse.
• Not able to charge my mobile phone. It was already needing to be charged, but I kept it bedside with me to be sure I woke up in time for an ophthalmologist appointment via its most compelling, “Get your sleepy self up!” alarm. Shortly after arising early enough to avert the alarm’s rude awakening, I walked into the kitchen and realized the coffee in the thermal server was not going to be hot. I drank it anyway. Then I looked over to where my phone was supposed to be charging. Oh, yeah. It’s in my room. *sigh* But, wait. I have a ton of work to do online today! Now I can’t even use my phone for that! You see, the ophthalmologist’s office also had absolutely no power, so the appointment was canceled, and I could have charged the phone anyway. It is what it is.
• Couldn’t open the garage door. The house was new in the 1980s. There were concerns about the garage door spring being able to handle the shift to and from the manual override. So down it stayed. I felt trapped. At least for a while.
• Took a silly risk. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., I got desperate enough for my phone to be charged that I took it out to the garage and plugged it into my car’s battery with an adaptor made for this. Of course, it’s really made for charging your phone while driving your car, not having it sit in the garage with just the battery on. I left it on for about an hour and a half, hoping the car battery could take the heat. It might have been a silly risk, but as it turned out, no harm, no foul. Thank You, Lord!
• Got help. Happily, the next door neighbor was out cleaning up some of the storm’s mess in his own yard today. We chatted, and he offered to help us with the garage door. It worked! We’re FREE! Huzzah! Oh! Make that, “I hope!” I still didn’t know if my car’s battery had given up the ghost or not.
• Saw housemate’s phone was fully charged. Hey! How did that happen? She told me she charged it with her laptop. Well, I didn’t want to do that, because my MacBook is my business laptop. You know, that thing I’m typing on while there’s absolutely no power to the desktop (my go-to machine)? But she challenged me to try charging it with my personal Windows laptop. I have to say I hate that machine, but I was grateful for it in a twisted kind of way. It mostly worked charging my phone with an adaptor, and had its juice been totally drained in the process, I wasn’t going to be upset. (I’m not sure whether I’m disappointed that it was only slightly drained or not.) What I hate is that this laptop has a mind of its own, and I’m convinced it’s possessed.
• Friends took us out to dinner last night. My housemate and I had each eaten about the equivalent of a package of crackers all day. That’s because we banned ourselves from opening the refrigerators. We were trying to protect the food! More on that in a separate bullet. Suffice it to say we were quite hungry by the time we were picked up by our friends, but we very much enjoyed a wonderful meal and fellowship! Today, due to the kindness of the next door neighbor figuring out how we could open the garage, my housemate and I were able to use her car to get a meal from a local diner. I had eaten a trail mix bar to avert “the shakes.” Old age is such fun.
• The refrigerators were having none of it. After returning from the diner, we each decided to catch an afternoon snooze. This no-lights thing does play with your tired switch. Anyway, after arising, I went into the kitchen with a prayer. “Lord, what would you like me to do now?” I sincerely queried. “Look down,” He replied. I believe it’s safe to say that this is the first time I’ve experienced the Good Lord telling me to mop the floor. But that’s what was needed, since the main refrigerator/freezer had created quite the puddle of melted ice! Several hours later, I wandered into the laundry room, where “my” refrigerator lives. As I tossed my dirty laundry into the bag, I stepped on something cold and wet. Here we go again! This time a simple beach towel sufficed for the mop up. Whew!
• Got a text from my daughter and son-in-law. They were fine. No power outage for them. Hurrah! But then a wonderfully delightful surprise: My son-in-law travels frequently and had accumulated several hotel points for a respectable brand. I was very thankful for his offer to use them during the remaining days of this power outage. But we each agreed that we would remain here. After all, we were learning how to rough it in suburbia. And, as we learned, we have the refrigerators to babysit.
• You have a handheld fan? This evening I saw my housemate fanning herself with a Japanese style fan. “Do you have another one of those?” I asked? “No,” she said, but she let me borrow her fan. Of course I got silly with my fanning, but then I gave it back to her. I’m still considering the sacrifice of my business laptop to charge up an air conditioning collar I bought a few months ago. And yes, I’ll let her borrow the AC collar if she wants to use it.
• Outdoor cooking. The barbecue itself is cooked. In the nearly eight years I’ve been here, it has never worked. Unless one uses the kind of thinking we’ve had to employ during our power outage adventure. For the past hour, I’ve taken the leftovers from last night’s dinner out to the barbecue and placed the box on one of the “arms” of the unit. And here are the results: I should have taken the box out way earlier. But even tepid, the warmed up food is still good.