Dark night of the soul

This week, our lovely power company turned off our electricity for about 24 hours.  It was quite a trying experience, especially for our children, who think that if you don’t have any electronic devices, your life is pretty much over.  “I’m so BOOOOORED!!” was the call du jour.

Now, on the plus side, located as we were between (at least at one point) four wildfires, we feel very lucky that we suffered zero property damage, never had to evacuate, never were in danger of losing any of our family, be they fleshy, furry, or scaly.  So we’re very pleased about that.  On the other hand, the fact that power was restored to the vast majority of our city—including the vast majority of our very own neighborhood!—nearly 12 hours before it was to us was pretty irritating.  The Mother is of the opinion that they just plain forgot to turn us back on.  I prefer the theory that they foolishly tried to turn everyone back on at once and a couple of the circuits just keeled over dead from the shock of it all.  Either way, we’re not pleased at the extra expenditure at Costco (for flashlights and headlamps) or the food that will be slowly going bad faster than usual over the next few days and weeks.  What makes it even more frustrating is the fact that the power company claims that they have to cut the power to reduce the risk of starting new fires when the winds get high.  Yet, within minutes after they turned the power back on, a whole new fire broke out, and the current working theory (at least according to that bastion of accuracy, the Internet) is that the sudden resumption of power actually caused the fire.  So it’s quite frustrating overall.

On the plus side, my children finally got to play that Minecraft Uno game we bought them, and I now understand why people used to go to bed so damn early in the olden days.  Also, if there was any lingering doubt in my mind that I need that stupid CPAP machine to sleep, they are firmly put to rest.  I went to bed at midnight and woke up at 2am, then at 4am, then at 6am, then the next time I didn’t even bother looking at the clock because obviously it was 8am, then the next time I woke up it was 7:30am, so obviously I was wrong before, and then the power came back on 8:30am and I promptly got up and reassembled my machine and got 3 good hours of sleep.  So that was fun.

Compared to all that, nothing else this week is even worth mentioning.  Tune in next week when (hopefully) there will be a longer post.  However, next weekend is also my birthday weekend, so I make no promises.