My Blackout Weekend

He's always been quite the drama queen. As calm as he has remained the last couple days I thought he pretty much understood me that there wasn't much I was going to be able to do to get us out of this situation. It's not that I wasn't worried but it wasn't going to help matters if he was in a constant panic mode. I guess today was his limit as he was by the intake valve waving his tail back in forth as if to say this is day three and it's time to PANIC!...get this baby up and running.

Now you take a look at him and he seems all innocent and such but like your typical male he can be quite demanding. That's why I know he's a male, he's demanding. If he swims wildly back and forth mid aquarium it's either to warm or to cold, if he's swimming near the intake it's "hey, you notice one of the grand kids accidentally unplug the filter", or during the two year battle to rid the aquarium of unwanted snails he'd cling to the front of the aquarium to let you know he was being crowded out in his little abode he hides in.

I changed up some of the water, reminded him I am not an electrician, I can't just run down the street and hang up downed power lines. I had planned though to check out advice from one of the electricians when acquiring about the lines on Sunday night. He said his dad use to buy oxidizer tablets from the pet store in case the electric went out. I am surely hoping he can't read my mind otherwise I have a feeling he'll be like my cats who I thought I could get a bargain brand cat food once and they looked at me like I couldn't get back to the store fast enough.

We haven't had a power outage this long in, well, this long in a couple years. Except that one didn't effect me as I was the only one whose wires didn't get ripped off the house. No matter I tried to explain to the neighbors that the tree wasn't exclusively mine I was met with scorn for wrecking their weekend. The tree ran down the middle of the property line. It was always my fault that they had a mess in their yards, including by the guy who was responsible for the other fifty percent of the tree. I got no credit for repeatedly calling out the electric company and asking them to bring it down below the lines, they insisted it was the property owners responsibility, which I'd argue their right of way made it part of theirs. Their biggest concern was the lack of access back there, I told them just drop it below the line and we'll clean up the mess. The last guy who came out said he wasn't going to worry about it. He looked at me and said, "look lady a hurricane couldn't bring that tree down". That's what you call famous last words considering I was watching television one day, it sprinkled for like two minutes, the lights flickered, the curtains swooshed inwards then nothing, no more rain, no big storm, nothing. I looked at my brother and I said I think that tree fell. I went to look and there it sat with the top part landing on the hill which kept it from making a thud sound when it fell. So what would have took a couple guys with a ladder a few hours to carefully craft the tree below the lines dropping it unfolded into a two day scenario of head scratching trying to figure out how to get back there and remove it. Of course the neighbors behind me couldn't help but na na nana na me but that didn't last to long as I got a check for three hundred dollars for them making burrows in my lawn with their trucks and they got notta thing for their many clean up jobs....plus they sat in the dark for two days. Karma, sometimes you just gotta love it. Yes I ended up with the biggest portion of that tree landing in my yard but what fell prior were branches from his side the tree, one smashed one neighbors shed, the other smashed part of his new fence but somehow it was all my fault. My sons and I took the tree and built the grand kids a log stepping wall along the property line in the back where I had spent several years filling in an area that had eroded over the years from the rainfall that would run down off the properties behind us, the tree falling enabled us to fill in quite a bit of area, that was another plus for us as we didn't have to find a way to get rid of the tree.

Since that incident it has been quite a few years since we've had to sit in the dark for days. When I first moved here it was quite common. I hated it. I had spent better of fifteen years living a few blocks from a hospital, I never experienced a lost of electricity for more than fifteen minutes. Losing electricity for any longer than a few hours makes me a nervous wreck as one such event where we lost electricity for four days I ended up battling a house fire. I remember standing in the kitchen hearing people screaming fire. I tried to convince myself I was hearing things...I was like let me step back a few feet as if there really is a fire next door they'll be running across the porch any second. As I looked towards the front of the house sure as can be here they came screaming past the window screaming fire. I run over there the bathroom was on fire, their grandmother had taken a jug and was filling it trying to douse it. Seems for whatever reason they let a four year old carry a candle into the bathroom where he accidentally ignited a wicker basket hanging on the back of the bathroom door full of toilet paper. By this time needless to say it had engulfed into quite a ball of flame. The house is rather old, nearly a hundred years old at that time, the wicker basket and it's contents had no problem setting the door ablaze. I knew the jug wasn't going to be the answer and it was only a matter of minutes before it started the ceiling ablaze so I ran home and grabbed some pliers off the window sill I kept there to turn the hose on with as the knob was broken at the time. I ran up the stairs with the hose just as grandma had given up the fight. As everybody else stood there screaming at me to get out the smoke was to bad I just yelled back hand me something for my face. There was just no way I was going to a homeless shelter, if that flame made it through the ceiling it was going to be over with. The more I doused the flame the more smoke would billow out, I'd have to run out to get some air then back in to fight it some more. First I just aimed to get the ceiling wet to keep the flame from moving upwards. Everyone was hysterical screaming get out but I wasn't going. Finally I heard the fire trucks. I drop the hose and run outside. The fire trucks drive right by the house. Seems they had their aunt who was visiting call the fire department and she gave them the wrong address. I head back into the house, this time I am determined I am winning this battle. I grabbed the shirt I was using as a makeshift mask, picked the hose back up but this time I was going head on, right upon the source and I wasn't leaving until it was out. I threw the hose over the back of the door moving it back and forth letting it flow directly down the back of the door, the smoke was unbearable, I couldn't see a thing, I couldn't let up enough to even run out and breathe, by the time the fire trucks got there I had put out the fire. The door was toast for sure and the floor suffered damage from the wicker basket falling on top of it. The linoleum burning was probably what was causing the heavy black smoke. My initial focus on keeping it from spreading to the ceiling was probably more a right one, if it had burned through the bathroom floor that floor wasn't full of insulation, the summer after I moved here I had the outside walls and attic floor blown full of insulation, it would have spread like a wild fire had it made it through that ceiling. Besides I wasn't counting on the fire department driving past the house either. Though they gave me the usual we don't recommend people fight their own house fires they seemed to rather admire my courage. My kids eyes were as big as saucers, they didn't know what to think, all they could mumble was asking me if the fire was huge, with all that commotion and screaming they probably thought the fire was massive, trying to calm their fears to let them know I wouldn't do anything foolish I just looked at them and said it was no where near the bonfires we have at their cousins house, those, at times, got pretty impressive.

This outage hit our county pretty heavy but not so much our particular neighborhood, we were among about six houses that lost power in the immediate area. I didn't have far to go to find a place to blog in the wee hours of the morning. There's a twenty four hour coffee house down the road, I've never been there before as I don't drink coffee, haven't had more than a teaspoon of the stuff in my life. I love the smell of coffee but not enough to want to spend a small fortune for an opportunity to sniff it. For those inquiring minds who want to know but probably don't have any justifiable reason to wonder why I am such an odd ball I often will quip I think it all originates from my dislike of coffee....you know, absent the ability to "bond" over that cup of joe your pretty much screwed....at that point you lower down your head while rolling your eyeballs upwards at them and that's about as much information as they care to find out.

I pull up in front of the coffee house, there's three girls out front. Since there was construction across the street I ask them if they know if it's okay I park there. They reply back it's fine, then I inquire if it's pretty safe to be here late at night. I know it got robbed once but I don't catch every tid bit of local news to know whether it's once, twice, three times, but they said they've never had a problem. I gather up my stuff and go inside. It has a warm inviting feel to it, historic old building remodeled inside back to it's original decor from once housing a television repair shop for a few decades. The girl behind the counter is receptive, I tell her I am not a coffee drinker and ask what else do they have available. Knowing the "health conscious" millennial's of today a can of Coke wasn't going to be an option, they like to disguise their intake of sugars by using fancy words like cappuccino, frappe, smoothies or icee's, you know, sort of like the fresh air experience of eating outside on the curb while ignoring the exhaust of the car idling next to you or having the fastest internet speed available while acting completely oblivious to increased radiation in the environment, today would be no different I'd have to digress to a three dollar twelve ounce bottle of Jones Creme Soda for a lesser calorie twelve ounce can of Coke.

Along side the wall was an area set up where people could add stuff to their coffee, at the end of that was one table that sat in front of the window. I opted to sit there. I reach down to plug in my stuff and I notice the front window is incredibly dirty. I take a glance over at the door and it's laden with fingerprints, I glance over at the other front window and it's in no better shape, actually it's in worse shape then the window I chose to sit at since there are more tables on the other side in front of it. There's a soft wisp of Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" emanating from the speaker system, which rather surprises me given the young age of most people in the room. I give the place a slow glance over looking at the many pictures on the wall each depicting a by gone era, I sit for a few minutes just observing the quiet, motionless handful of bodies sitting around when I get this creepy feeling that I had entered some sort of twilight zone of reincarnate's of a by gone era engulfed in the new era of technology. I shake the feeling off and finish readying my stuff for a few hours of blogging.

It didn't take long to realize I wasn't going to get to much into my thoughts when someone would come in and place an order. I don't know what it was they were grinding at any particular moment but whatever they'd grind it also ground any thoughts you were having right out of your head. Maybe it was their way of making sure no one was actually going to die in there but there were times I felt like a voice should come over an intercom and advise, "Attention, for your safety and convenience we advise the use of a safety harness to secure yourself in position while we grind this next batch of beans." Each time I was ground from my thoughts I would look around the room, as there was simple nothing else one could contemplate doing during this process, or at least I thought. This didn't seem to disturb or bother anybody else, they didn't look up, they didn't move, finch, nothing, they just sat there like zombies staring at their screens, I was totally convinced that I had entered a twilight zone. The next day when someone inquired how my first trip to the coffee house was I said fine if you don't mind the jarring sound of coffee beans every few minutes. I remarked I don't know why they don't do that in the backroom, she said it was the novelty of it. Must be much like the novelty of ignoring inhaling car exhaust, emitting increased radiation and pretending using fancy words doesn't affect your sugar intake.

The next night the electric still wasn't restored. There really wasn't a whole lot of options, there was sitting there looking into the abyss of darkness by candle light or going down to the coffee house to the intermittent grinding away of my thoughts. This time though I am a little more mentally prepared that every time I hear the tingling sound of the bells on the door I knew I had but moments to finish a thought or put it on hold. That gave me a bit more time to just glance around observing. Pretty much outside of what went on behind the counter where they seemed rather involved in rinsing and cleaning things up they really didn't pay much attention to the seating or self serve area, not that it came as a surprise given how dirty the windows were, they, like the glass on the pictures probably haven't been washed since the day they opened. When people got up to leave they didn't wash off the tables, nor did they wipe down the self serve buffet area, oh excuse me, please pardon my lack of millennial-ism, to ignore it you have to attach a fancy word, like a la francaise. They did empty the trash under the a la francaise but that was about as much ambition as they were going to put into it. As I stood outside taking a picture hoping I could pick up all the dirt on the window with all the glaring lights there were three guys sitting at a table. One of the guys remarked how pro Trump supporters were old people, he said once they all die off we can change the world the way we want it. From my short excursion out into their world let's just hope there's enough under the millennial's world not to let that happen. For it is often said that one generation will revert back to the pattern of the generation that came prior to the generation before it. Let there be hope that's what happens. The millennial generation is just to arrogant for their own good.