Power Play

Tony and I awoke to a boom on Friday morning at 6:30.  The power had gone out and emergency personnel were swarming the street beyond our backyard.  Due to the early hour, there were no sirens, but there was fire.  A transformer on one of the power poles had blown and caught the pole on fire and it was slowing burning down its length.

 

You guys!  I didn’t know they could do that!  I don’t feel safe at all anymore, knowing now that transformers can explode and catch their poles on fire!

 

 

We were without power from 6:30 AM to 10:30 PM, a long-ass time if you haven’t showered since Wednesday night, which I hadn’t.  I was planning to shower Friday morning because Tony and I were going to go out to celebrate our ninth (!) anniversary, which was really on Wednesday.  Wednesday was a horrible day for me.  Thursday was better, but that’s a relative term and objectively, it was still really challenging.  I really needed a good day on Friday.

 

Tony left for basketball pretty much immediately after the power blew, and when the kids got up, I bade them get dressed and then I hauled us all (including a grocery sack full of frozen breastmilk that I intended to save, even if the rest of our freezer turned to lukewarm mush) over to my brother’s house for breakfast.  While there, I was temporarily stymied by his coffee machine.  First of all, I was not in a good place; I had consumed no caffeine, I was sleep-deprived, and like a good mom, I fed everyone else before myself.  I was starting to get hangry, and I needed coffee ASAP.  Second of all, Leland has a combination coffee maker/espresso machine – this was apparently too much for my limited faculties.  I couldn’t open the coffee maker side, so I filled the espresso side with water, put coffee grounds in the little espresso maker part, and made myself world’s largest espresso.  It was like a cup of coffee, but it was a cup of espresso.  Wired!

 

I credit the caffeine with helping me make it through the day without killing anyone.  Indeed, I almost had a good day, under the circumstances.

 

Tony rented a generator to keep our freezer going, and I finally foisted the big boys off on a good friend for a sleepover.  Tony, the baby, and I went out after all, having a lovely (unwashed) anniversary dinner at Anthony’s where I indulged in my unholy love of moules-frites.  Freddie was chill at the restaurant for almost an hour, which is all anyone can really ask of a baby.

 

 

When we got back home, Tony hooked the generator up to our tankless water heater for five minutes so I could shower in the dark.  And then, almost as soon as the power was back, I went to bed.

 

Like an idiot, I kept repeating, aloud, the mantra “lemons out of lemonade, lemons out of lemonade” on Friday.  So now I’ve become the unwashed crazy lady pushing a stroller up a hill, baby strapped to my chest, talking to myself.  Let’s hope there are no more exploding power poles in my future.