Power Trip

"Never forecast rain in a drought" - Old weatherman's proverb.

Friday night/Saturday morning was peculiar, to say the least. After fighting a summer cold for a couple of days, I finally succumbed in complete defeat. I was home alone, and, as usual, my fancies turned frightful in my solitude. I folded up on the couch in the screen porch with a box of Kleenex, whimpering, gushing a torrent of acidic nasal discharges. There had been showers forecast, but they had been forecast before, usually going North or South of my barren quarter-acre.

I dozed fitfully until about 3:00 a.m., until the thunder became more or less continuous and the sky was full of spectacular branching lightning strokes. This went on for a half hour or more, still no rain.

And then the rains came, Biblical in scope, the streets rapidly filling with rushing water. I turned on the TV, one channel had a lonely announcer in a half-darkened studio, giving us the story, until a "squee-pop" came from the set. The power was out.

Now those of us living in storm country have learned a drill about power outages- get a flashlight, (my MacBook screen is actually pretty bright) unplug sensitive appliances and most importantly, monitor foods in the refrigerator for thawing. Well, the power had already been out for several minutes when I remembered that there was a half-full carton of Dove™ chocolate ice cream in the freezer. Thank God it wasn't spoiled.

So I stayed up, writing in a sugar-sudafed-chocolate coma (see tomorrow's post) until the power was restored a half hour later.