The Rolling Blackout of My Brain

On Monday we had a record high temperature here in the metroplex. This overloaded the grid and the electric company decided to do rolling blackouts. It was about 4:20 in the afternoon and I was watching Oprah. Suddenly silence. All three cats perked their ears and looked around. At first I just thought it was one of those pop off/pop on things that happen sometimes. Well no pop on. It seemed weirdly quiet. The TV, clothes dryer and A/C all went out, and then there was just silence. I called My Sweetie - we have one old-fashioned corded phone in the kitchen that came with the house. I was going to replace it but it's one of those chalkboard box phones and when I took it off the wall I saw that the previous owners had wallpapered around it and the old wallpaper was there in a good sized square. So that's why it's still there. Anyway, I called him to report this information, which really makes no sense. Then I went outside to smoke a cigarette and heard the kids next door swimming in their pool. I stood up on the bench on the deck (and they are downhill from us) and yelled over, "Did your power go out?" The kid said, "Yeah it's out on the whole street." Well their dad works for the power company so I didn't see a reason to call it in.

Now here's the part where I got stupid. I realized that with no power I really didn't know what to do with myself. My dopey brain was going 90 miles an hour. I figured that if the power never came back on, we could stay at my Mom's house because they are out of town. I also started thinking I shouldn't be opening the fridge or freezer. So feeling all clever, I thought I should put beer in an ice chest and get ice from the ice dispenser so I wouldn't have to open the freezer. Yep, the ice dispenser needs electricity, Doh! So then I thought, "Well the water works, I'll finish up the kitchen." So I dumped a bowl of spaghetti into the garbage disposal. Doh! That also uses electricity. At that point I kinda gave up and called one of my girlfriends in North Carolina (on my weird corded phone) and talked until the power came back on. The power was only out for about 30 minutes. I didn't realize how doofy I could be in so short a time. Oh and it was about another hour after the power came back on before I remembered to turn the clothes dryer back on.

I didn't realize that my brain was tied into the power grid. But when the power went out, so did my brain. Doh!