Power Outage!

Power outages are inconvenient, even scary. My husband woke me up early to say there’d been a bad storm and we had a power outage.  

The alarm clock…” I said in my sleep. Sleep-talking is one of my gifts.  The alarm clock is battery-operated, hence unaffected, but we apparently conversed about it. 

I lay there thinking about power outages:  trying to read in inadequate light, standing in line for coffee (we have an electric stove), living without fans,  air conditioning, wifi, TV, or charger for tablets and computers.  

The house was too quiet.  The electric fans were not spinning.  I had that sticky feeling, as if we’d been camping out.  I called the power company and learned that twenty-thousand people were without power.

Power outages are slow, unless you have caffeine and reading lights.  One summer we endured three days without power. At night we ended up at IHOP or Denny’s.  It was that, or go to sleep at 9.

At 8 a.m., my priority was caffeine. I dumped water over teabags in a pitcher and made sun tea.  I sat in the Adirondack chair watching the water turn into tea while I read John Brunner’s The Shockwave Rider, a dystopian novel that is all too prescient of many aspects of our computer-dependent, Big Brother-monitored society. 

It was just so hot, though…. I finally went indoors and tried reading by battery-operated lantern.  But there wasn’t enough light.  

This afternoon I was going out the door in search of air-conditioning when the lights came on.  Hurrah!  I happily turned on the fans, read my book, drank coffee, and allowed the prima elder-cat to watch an episode of Modern Family.  

We only endured eight and a half hours without power.  Why is it so uncomfortable?  If anybody can recommend a non-electric coffee-making device that doesn’t involve a propane camping stove, I will be forever grateful.