Duck! A Vent!

This really isn't a vent, it's just that I amused myself so with that headline, I had to leave it in.

The actual, significantly less clever headline, should be something along the lines of “Watt?? That's An Out(r)age!”

The other working title is, “My God, this is boring.” Whatever the title, here it is:

I'm pretty certain my power company's infrastructure is mostly made of linguine. I won't mention the power company by name because it may Jeopardize Current Profit & Loss. But every time the forecast even CALLS for rain, the power goes out. Yesterday, it poured.

The first hint of trouble came yesterday afternoon as I was sitting outside around 5:30 when the skies suddenly darkened with flying monkeys. I told myself it was merely their springtime northern migration, and went back inside. That was a mistake.

At 6:15 the power went out with the dreaded, all too familiar “POP”. As the basement flooded with darkness, the boys emerged upstairs like rats on the Andrea Doria. The dogs, too, hypersensitive to the ultrasonic fluttering of monkey wings, ran into the living room in search of some explanation. I had none.

We sat on the couch, passing the time until I needed to take my daughter, Alex, to her Babysitting gig in the next town over. We were confident that the power would be restored by the time we returned, if not sooner.

After dropping off Alex, the boys asked that we go for a drive, obviously not wanting to leave the haven of functioning electronics, bright lights and XM Radio. But even after milking the ride home with a stop at the gas station, we returned to find our little piece of the development still without power.

Inside, I lit a candle and taught my son Michael to play solitaire – using REAL playing cards. After a while, we both learned that double-clicking on an Ace does not move it up top, and saying “undo” has no effect on your last move.

While Michael arranged red jacks on top of black queens BY HAND, Paul and I amused ourselves by making our 400 pound Rottie-mix, Remi, chase the circle of flashlight. We were all embarrassed for her when we stood the flashlight on end and pointed the beam onto the ceiling. Yet, somehow I felt vindication, watching this sealionesque dog jump at the ceiling, considering her gnawing of our new coffee table, our old coffee table, our new kitchen set, our old kitchen set, the patio furniture, the patio, even the new smoke detector that previously sat in the box on a table in our hallway. Now every time she flatulates, the fire department comes.

By now we were getting a bit antsy. I had tried willing the power on several times, to no avail. Suddenly I heard a rumbling on the back porch. Fearing a wayward flying monkey, I distracted Remi from the flashlight long enough to make her go first. Peering outside, we saw that the angry winds had grabbed hold of the patio umbrella and were trying to take it and our wooden table northward.
“Why couldn't it have been a monkey?”, I thought.

I ventured outside and grabbed the umbrella, trying to slide it out of the hole in the center of the table. The wind calmed long enough to let me get the base of the umbrella out of the table, then gusted to several thousand miles per hour. Let's just say, if you live below the skies of central Jersey and happened to hear the ominous overhead caterwauling of:

A Spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
The medicine go down-wown
The medicine go down
Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down
In a most delightful way

Don't be alarmed. It was me.

Seeing how it was also “spring ahead” night, Michael suggested calling Domino's at 1:59, knowing there was no way they could get us our pizza by 2:14. We explored devious abuses of Daylight Savings Time, until Alex returned home at 9:30. We chatted for a while about flying monkeys, Domino's pizza and what the elementary school looks like from the air. But since her babysitee forgot to pay her and it was clear the power would not return, we all decided to call it a day.

And to think, two hundred years ago this was EVERY day.