The Power Cut
I am grateful to live in a place where I have running water, internet and electricity. It pleases me so much. That’s why I was incredibly distressed when our electricity went off the other morning. I was checking my email when it happened. Suddenly I wasn’t online. I looked over at the modem and saw that it was off. Then I realized that I couldn’t hear the steady hum of the refrigerator.
“What’s happening?” I asked my husband.
“Look’s like the power has been cut,” he said.
That’s when panic set in. “Why is this happening? What am I supposed to do with no power? How am I going to work today? Maybe I’ll go clean the bathroom,” I said going upstairs. I stood in the bathroom door thinking about cleaning when I realized that I usually listen to an audiobook while I clean and all my audiobooks are on my computer. My computer’s battery doesn’t work so it needs to be plugged in. But wait, there’s no electricity. I couldn’t clean under these conditions. So I went back down stairs to pace the living room.
“We have an electric stove. How am I going to cook lunch?” I asked.
“We just ate breakfast the power will be back on by then. If it’s not we’ll go out for lunch,” my husband said.
He didn’t seem to understand that I had just bought some leek and herb sausages from the butcher that I was planning on cooking for lunch. I had to have leek and herb sausages for lunch. I’d been planning it. I couldn’t just go out for lunch. That wasn’t the plan. The plan was sausages.
I could cook my sausages over an open fire, but it was raining pretty hard and I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to find any dry wood anywhere. Then I realized that we have a stone floor in our place. Surely it wouldn’t hurt anything if I just stared a little fire in the living room. We have four dining chairs and their is only two of us. Those extra chairs would make good firewood. I was just about to smash one of the chairs on the floor and start constructing my fire pit when the electricity came back on. I was so happy. That was the hardest ten minutes of my life.
