At Last! Sing it Etta!

It finally happened, late on day 18. We got electricity. Shortly after I posted the Friday entry, Teen Angel sent me a text that simply said, “The pole fairy came and left us a present”. I asked if the darn pole fairy finished the job or gave us the shaft. “Good news”, Teen Angel said. The lights were on, TA did a little dance in the street and Hubby almost kissed a lineman from North Carolina. Mama J. quickly went about washing some clothes because she gets jittery if she has more than three dirty socks at a time, and Papa T. turned on his first book on tape in nearly three weeks. Ah. All was right with the world according to Teen Angel. I couldn’t wait to get home.

I really didn’t let myself believe it was true until I pulled in the driveway, flung open the car door and listened carefully for….silence. Blissful, delicious silence. No generator humming its tired old song at decibels higher than the speakers at a Metallica concert. No mechanical roar overpowering the song of the winter birds. Just wonderful, peaceful silence. The motion light over the garage splattered me with light as I walked inside. I giggled out loud. Indoors, the Hula-gen’s were washing clothes, picking up around the house and making all kinds of attempts to clear away the cluttered mess we had allowed to build during the power outage because we simply didn’t care enough to keep the house clean in the midst of all the ice, mud and self pity we were wallowing in. We were so joyous I had to laugh at us. Nothing could bring us down. We were wasteful with our energy for sure, flipping on lights every chance we got and firing up everything from the vacuum cleaner to the stove. I would have sat in the hot tub if the chemicals hadn’t been so out of balance from sitting motionless for three weeks. It was amazing how something so simple made our lives so much better in a matter of minutes.

Ironically, we had a small setback Saturday. We went to the mall Saturday because the only places I had been in three weeks had been home, work and a visit to church. I felt so out of touch. I needed to see people other than family and coworkers. I scored $400 worth of clothes for $32. Sweet! And we headed home. Only to find that our power had gone out AGAIN. Now, working for a power company, I knew this was a possibility since the restoration process can be a little bumpy, but I had blissfully blocked this piece of knowledge from my pea brain and allowed us to leave the house Saturday without a door key. Anyone know to spell “dumb ass”? H-U-L-A. With the little keypad on our garage deader than Jimmy Hendrix, we were locked out of our house. We soon discovered that linemen were working in the back part of our subdivision and had basically turned us off during their work, with the promise of having everybody back on in about forty five minutes. We killed the time by driving around nearby subdivisions, looking for houses for sale…that are fed underground. An hour later we were home, snuggled into our jammies with iced tea and popcorn. I had a good book in my lap and Hubby was tuned into TruTV for multiple episodes of Cops. Ah, all was right with the world.