Powerless

[written by hand last night]

Husband was picking up son. Daughter was at practice. And I was editing. Editing, editing, editing (the bane of my existence). That was when it first flickered. I hit save—it’s a reflex because I have no clue how much time my laptop battery is good for, but it’s not a lot. Another flicker.

It happened three or four more times before the lights went out and the house went silent, washer and drying stopping mid-cycle. The computer didn’t complain, oddly, but like I said, no clue how long that would last, so I saved again and shut down.

I came upstairs in the dark, felt along the top of the refrigerator. There is a single, solitary benefit to being married to a smoker—you always have matches, and they are somewhere accessible.

On either side of our dinner table, hanging on the wall, we have hanging candle holders with tapers. They are relatively high and the light reflects against the walls, so they create a fair amount of light. I started with them. Then I lit two at the far end of the room and one in the bathroom.

Then my husband got home with my son.

“Power’s out!” He proclaimed, as if I hadn’t spent the last ten minutes immersed in darkness. He gets this weird glint… a cross somewhere between child and maniac—an unnatural state of excitement that is part fun, part annoying. I did what I always do, rolled my eyes and looked at him as if he’s quite mad.

Fortunately, we have a gas stove top, so reheating the gravy (from a dinner of biscuits and gravy) for my son’s dinner wasn’t an obstacle, nor was following up dinner with tea and cocoa.

My son texted friends for a bit, then his phone started to get wonky. He read for a little, watched part of a TV show on his iPod… but he was antsy.

My husband offered the usual fare, “should we wrestle? I could poke you.”

“No thanks.” (My son’s sarcasm doesn’t translate into print very well, but it was apparent to me.)

And then Mr. Tart hit paydirt… “Wanna play Scrabble?”

I took the flashlight downstairs to find the game, because I’m the only person who lives at my house capable of LOOKING for anything (never mind that it sat on the game shelf in our spare room where I said it would be) and retrieved it.

So my son, husband and I played Scrabble until my daughter got home and said we were a bunch of geeks, but you know what? I thought it was a nice night, even if it put me further behind on my editing and I only got two new pages written.


[written this morning]

The power was on this morning, thankfully (the Tart doesn’t function well with no shower). If that happened with any regularity, it would be hell on my writing career. I really prefer to write in the bath, but we were conserving hot water and my daughter had HAD to shower, as she’d been in a pool. Besides that though, we really only had our front room lit up, so there were too many PEOPLE to be very efficient… write a sentence, hubby talks… write a sentence, daughter demands something. That said, periodic bouts of forced togetherness are really sort of nice from time to time. I think I liked it.

And so you don’t forget where you are, or what day it is (Naked Thursday)… apparently the Urban Dictionary has an entry for Strip Scrabble… and these two people must know it…