Lights Out

It sure has been an interesting week. Neil celebrated his birthday this week. He sure is getting old, he now uses a whole box of candles. Then he took off to Laramie, Wyoming to install a heating/air conditioning system in a Chili’s. I’ve sure missed him but at least Laramie is getting a Chili’s. It seems like nature’s law when the man of the house who fixes everything is gone—things break. Or in my case the power goes out in the wee hours of the morning. I didn’t miss my alarm or anything due to my insomnia I was very awake hours before the alarm was suppose to go off. When I realized the power was off, I just waited in bed until it was time to get up and tried to figure out how I was going to get ready. I ended up carrying all my makeup into the kitchen and put on my makeup with light from the kitchen window. Then I got dressed in the dark. I literally had to go into my closet pull something out randomly bring it into the light to see if it was acceptable to wear. Why didn’t I use the flashlight that I keep in my nightstand drawer for such occasions? The batteries were dead and I would have had to have a flashlight to find new batteries. Good thing there was some light coming in through the windows, or I would have been in a lot of trouble. I was avoiding doing my hair because unfortunately blow-dryers don’t run off of batteries. I was hoping the power would come on before I had to do my hair. No such luck. So I had to put in some gel and scrunch it. Then came the most challenging part. How was I going to get my car out of the garage? I seriously was imagining the phone call I was going to have to make to my supervisor telling her that I couldn’t come into work because I was trapped in my own house. So I tried pushing the garage door button anyway, hoping it would just open. Nothing. So I ventured into the dark and scary garage to try to open the door myself. I’ve seen it done before. Well, it doesn’t budge. I call Neil to ask for his advice. Apparently, there is a bright red release cord hanging in the center near the garage door. He told me to pull it and the garage door opened up very easily. What a relief. The sad thing is that I know I knew that there was a release but in my panic I just forgot. I’m sure Neil’s co-workers got a great laugh out of my plight. Well, as I am about to head out the door, the power comes on. Seriously, could the timing have been any better? After all that, the power just comes back on, at least it could have waited until I left, so I wouldn’t have felt so dumb about the garage door “incident.” Anyway, I pulled out of the garage and decide that since the power is back on I could use my clicker to close it. Push the button several times and nothing happens. So I have to get out of my car and start closing it. Due to the rain last night it was muddy. So my hands get dirty and it stops halfway down and won’t budge. I panic again. I can’t leave it half open. I didn’t want to make anymore embarrassing phone calls, so I try the only thing I could think of, I tried pushing my clicker again and it worked! I don’t know why it didn’t work in the first place. Although, now that I think about it, I’m sure it was some sort of safety mechanism or something that stopped it. Needless to say, I still made it to work fairly on time.

The moral of the story is: check your batteries in your flashlights often and invent a blow-dryer that has a battery back-up.