It's about 9:25 at night and I'm downstairs watching Dear John (taking advantage of Austin being out of town to watch chick flicks). One minute I'm watching John get on a plane heading off to war and the next I'm in complete darkness. The power in my house is completely out. It's pitch black. And because I watch too much TV, my first thought is "someone's cut the power line to my house and now they're sneaking around upstairs. It's only a matter of time before they creep down the stairs and kill me." Since I figure I only have a few more minutes to live, I take the opportunity to call Austin to say good-bye.
Luckily, he's a little more level headed than I am.
Rachel, use your phone as a flash light and go upstairs. Take the dogs with you.
This is about the time that I realize the dogs are still sleeping on the floor. The fact that they're not bothered in the least by the absolute darkness, puts me at ease. If there was a psycho killer in the house, surely they would have at least barked, right?
I make it upstairs and go to the front door and peek through the window. The power in the entire block is out and I can see the neighbors across the street creeping around their living room with flashlights. Good idea.
Luckily, I am a fan of candles as decor. I light the candles in my living room and use one to carry around the house with me as I search for my flashlight. I must say though, that while I generally find candle light to be romantic, it's a tad creepy when you're walking around the house alone in the unintentional dark. The shadows make pillows strewn across an unmade bed look like a body and now I've gone and freaked myself out again. I make a mental note to make my bed every morning from here on out.
I find the flashlight on the refrigerator but don't really know why I need it since I have the candle. The candle smells much better anyway. Austin asks if I want him to hang up and do some research on the Internet to find the # to call to figure out what happened. I am torn between wanting a legitimate reason for the lights going out (so I can rest assured that it's not a band of killers attacking the entire neighborhood all at once) and wanting him to stay on the phone to make me feel a little more connected to the world.
Finally, I tell him to do his investigating and I call my mom instead. She brings the practical aspect to the scenario.
Rachel, you don't want your power to be out too long or the stuff in your refrigerator will start to go bad. If it's not back on in an hour, bag up your cold stuff and come over here.
Good point. It's past her bedtime at this point, so I let her go. Austin calls back to inform me that the guy from the city said a transformer in the area blew but there was already a team en route to fix it.
Hope!
So, I curl up on the couch to wait for the lights to come back on. Austin says that he has to go to a meeting but he'll call later to make sure I'm okay.
It's just me and the dogs now, hanging out in the romantic candlelit living room. I'm bored so I decide to take pictures...it's the only thing to do when you have no power.
It's amazing how much difference a flash can make!!
Eventually the power comes back on. By this time, I'm too tuckered to finish my movie so I head to bed.
The good news is that a. It wasn't a crazy murderer who shut off my power and I'm still alive to tell the tale and b. my pseudo crisis made Austin admit that he's actually glad I have 2 giant dogs at home with me :) Living on a farm has it's advantages :)
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