So there I was the other night, nestled in my reliner listening to Books on Tape when, suddenly, the whole damned world went away.........the book stopped playing and I was plunged into a darkness blacker than I ever remembered, though perhaps the womb might have been as dark.....I do not really remember that.
Fortunately I knew it was not my failibg visionand had to be an electical failure of cosmic proportions. The almost funny part was that I got up from my chair intendibg to walk over 4 steps to where I had a flashlight, but once having lost physical contact with the chair I did not know which te hell way was up. I groped around cautiously for at least 5 minutes abd did bnot encounter anything and it was the weirdest feeling I have had since .......well, never mind.....it was weird and with each effort to find something solid I b ecame more panicky. Had I suddenly been trabspoted to an unlit closet in the spaceship I am sure is hovering up there somewhere, occasionally shooting strange confusing rays down at me just for laughs? Still groping and wondering where I was I finally, tenks gott, encountered Glass. A few gropes led me to r4ecognize a sliding glass door at the far end of the dining room and I nearly sobbed in elief. At least5 I ws still in my own house, though how I had managed to get to that location without tripping over anything or feeling anything solid is still beyond me. Anyway, I now knew how to feel my way to a flashlight and the world was no longer the depths of a coal mine.
I know they are always telling us to be prepared for emergencies and I have sporadically attempted to do ust that, but after having to dump the tightly covered trash can in my back yard that contained my emergency earthquake supplies because of creepingt mildew and the outdatedness of most of its contents a lot of which was cat food years past its use=by date, I have lost enthusiasm fo such projects. I did remember that I had a brand new hur4icane lamp in the garage and I actually webnt out and found it, pristine in its box with insgtructions I could not read of course, so Igrabbed a few candles, lit them and stuck them onto a plate, made my way to the bedroom and did what any sensible person would do, I went to bed.
Oooops, not true....I forgot that I had gingerly made my way out the fronbt door clutching my flashlight to see if the rest of the neighborhood was also pitch black and encountered a cr3ew fromn the power company making their way downb the street trying to find the source of the outage. They asked permission to go into my back yard to examine the powe pole and line nd I gave thenm carte blanch before staggering back in and going to bed. Contact with a human rather than a creature 3 feet tall with huge eyes did much to reassure me. Fortunate0ly, my Braille reader has a battery life of something like 60 hours so I was even able to create a semblance of normality by listening to a Dave Barry book...was I lucky or what? Thus passed the darkest night since my adventures patrolling the neighborhood as an air raid wardebn messenger during the Big War. Somehow....that was not nearly as dark......dunno why. Pauline and I awoke to a sunny day with appliances either buzzing happily (freezer and frig) and all the others eagerly waiting for me to push their buttons.
The only small disaster centered around the candles which I HAD blown out but which had puddled more wax than one could imagine might be in a little stub of candle and which had dribbled out of the dish and onto my bedside bookcase, an assortment of old books and, of course, the floor. I figure I got off easy. I only had to reset one clock which was plugged in and was about 4 hours behind.
Oy Gevalt. Too muchexcitement.
Love, Lo
PS I have since learned how to operate the hurrican leamp and have ordered 4 more. The Boy Scouts had it right....Be Prepared.
