Our power went out last night. And it scared the daylights out of me. I was writing on the computer with the dimmer on overhead, night light on in the kitchen and it just went black. Everywhere. The whole complex lost power. It was like a scene from the scariest movie I'd ever seen. I couldn't see anything. Even as my eyes adjusted to the darkness, the stars outside barely lit the cars below. I was afraid to move, so my instinct was to just start yelling. I obviously didn't consider the sleeping baby in the next room. It was all about finding Phaeton at that moment and making sure the guy with the knife and scary mask didn't find me first. I yelled louder for Phaeton until all of a sudden I heard him shooshing me from 3 feet away. "Seriously? I'm right here. You're going to wake up Adeleigh."
"I'm scared. The power's never gone out on me before."
"It's cool. It's like we're camping. Grab the flashlight."
"I'm too scared to move. You grab it."
(Sigh) He brought me the flashlight and I went and did the one thing you're not supposed to do in a power outage - I opened the fridge. I stood there with it wide open and asked, "What if all the food goes bad?"
"Well, it will if you do that. Shut the door. It'll stay cool enough inside for awhile if you just leave it shut."
"Oh, okay."
Then Phaeton reminded me about a solar flare that's affecting satellites and wondered if that might be what's causing the power outage. "Oh, and there's a New Moon tonight."
"Oh great. So you're saying this is the end of the world? Are we going to collide with the sun tonight?"
"No, that's supposed to happen in December. We'll be fine until then. This is something else."
Great.
I took the flashlight and went to go check on Adeleigh, who of course, was sound asleep. It was eerily silent in the bedroom with the humidifier and fan off, so I turned on the stuffed sheep noise-maker we have. I put it on the River setting. Now it really sounded like we were camping. I pulled the candles down from the closet just in case Phaeton would need them to get ready in the morning. We decided to try and go to sleep.
Just as we were starting to doze off, the smoke detector in the hallway started beeping. Not in a frightening, There's a fire! sort of way. But in an annoying, You're not getting any sleep tonight because I'm going to randomly freak out until the power comes back on, sort of way. Phaeton got up and shut the bedroom door to try and quiet the noise. Finally, we started to doze off again. Then we heard a loud bang on the bedroom door.
I clung onto Phaeton. "What was that?"
"I dunno. Maybe one of the pets."
I grabbed the flashlight and hesitantly opened the door. I found Rico cowering in the hallway. He must've tried to come in but couldn't see the door shut and slammed right into it. This whole power outage was throwing off everyone's mojo.
That reminded me of a time growing up in Colorado Springs. I was playing in the back yard and went to run inside. I saw the sliding glass door open but what I didn't notice was the screen door still shut. I kept running and barreled right into the screen. The force of the impact knocked the screen off its hinges and gave me a bloody nose. The screen door never worked the same for the remaining 12 years we lived in that house. And I never ran inside from the yard again.
Fortunately, Rico and the bedroom door were unscathed by the collision. I think it just shocked the poor dog. I let him in so he could join the rest of the family in the bedroom.
Just as I was contemplating what food I'd need to replace in the refrigerator, the power came back on. The fan, the night lights, the clocks. I think the power was off for an hour, at most. And we didn't collide with the sun. And we don't really think we will in December either. But for now, I'm just grateful that the TV is working so I can watch The Bachelor tonight.
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