Lights Out 2: The Crappening

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the house...

And just like a crappy movie sequel that nobody wanted except for creatively-deficient and greedy Hollywood execs, our electricity went out again. Six days after the first traumatic five day, four night ordeal.

Mercifully, it was a lot less severe than the first go-around, but it was still agonizing. I couldn't believe it. I'd just got accustomed to having, you know, the simple things in life--lights, air conditioning, the ability to cook--and so naïve me, I settled into my comfy electric love-seat again. And outside, the winds picked up. Sirens wailed. Hail from Hell pounded down. Our larger dog jumped up into my lap (nearly rupturing me in the doing), her heart pounding against her chest. And the lights flickered. I moaned. Another flickering. I groaned. A third time, I'm getting angry. And on the fourth?

Ka-Blam! Crackle, snap, pop, baby, transformers blew all in a row like a string of firecrackers. Lights out! Again.

This time, I'm screaming and cursing at the top of my lungs. I'm pretty sure I heard a collective wail of agony and torment from around the neighborhood, as well. And there I was, stuck in the electric recliner again like a never-learning goofball.

But since our first outage, I'd developed a network of street-long neighbors who kept each other appraised of the situation. Seeing as how there wasn't anything else to do, I took to my phone and it started dinging away with panicked texts from our newly-formed neighborhood alliance.

To all of us, it just seemed cruel that the mad gods of climate change had decided to hit us again after not even a week-long respite.

I knew where to go on my phone to check out the damage and to see if we'd get a quicker response this time. Apparently, whatever the problem was, it showed that if affected about 100 of my neighbors, so I assured my network of pals that we'd get higher priority this time. My best informant (the last of the hold-outs to stay home from the last storm) took to her car to cruise the neighborhood and scope out the problem. An entire power-line at the end of two blocks had completely fallen down, blocking off the street.

So my initial assessment was correct: it's a major problem that would get immediate attention. However, it was also a huge-ass problem that would take time. And I wasn't reassured by the power energy company's on-line, rote complaint about "we're doing the best we can, bla, bla, bla, but it's raining outside, you suckers may have to wait a a couple days, bla, bla, bla, company line and read between the lines: you're gonna get hit with hella price increases next year due to these storms."

But as I said, this time things didn't seem as severe. It helped immensely having my wife home with me during this outing. Just several hours earlier, she had just got back from helping her mom out with projects for a week and was definitely happy to be home. You know...relaxing in a nice, cool, electricity-filled home.

But as the ubiquitous "they" say: misery loves company. (Seeing as how she'd missed the entire first storm, I was more than happy to share my misery pain and suffering and First World Problems I'd endured.)

While still stuck in my mandated reclining pose, she came downstairs to join me, flashlights lighting the way. We sat in the darkness for a while, just chatting. Finally, she said, "Well, I'm going to bed." Me? I wasn't ready to go to bed at 9:00 on a weekend, so I sat in the dark with my phone, investigating, complaining, trying vainly to get a human's response to no avail.

When I finally stumbled up to bed, I was hot, sweating, miserable. Until at 2:00 A.M., whizzzzzzz...the lights came back on! The air conditioning window unit kicked on! Huzzah! Hooray for the power company!

Then again, it's getting kinda ridiculous. Every time our power blows out (and it does so a lot in our heavily wooded area), we suffer as do the power and light workers who trudge out into the storm to fix things. But they keep applying Band-Aids to the problem, instead of fixing the deeper issue: why not bury the damn lines like everybody out in newer suburbia has had done?

Okay, I had to gripe! I hope--nay, I pray--next week at this time, you won't be reading about a third power outage. I write this as thunder is booming outside and the rain is crying down.

Sigh...

Speaking of traumatic times, every time I think I've got problems, I consider poor Shawn Biltmore. Shawn's a corporate drudge on the lowest rung of low ladders at a heartless, soulless corporation. He also hates his job, has women problems, and has just been bitten by a werewolf. Hijinx ensue in my bloody, darkly comical, horror mystery, Corporate Wolf. Check it out here before the next full moon!

The Night That the Lights Went Out in Kansas

Last week, tragedy struck. The electricity went out in my house for five days. Now, before you say, "Stuart, that hardly constitutes a tragedy," you'd best hear me out. Note that I didn't say five minutes, nor a piddly five hours. We're talking five DAYS. That's five days and four nights of sitting in the dark and sweating in the insufferable heat with absolutely NOTHING to do. That fully constitutes a tragedy in my book and I don't want to hear from any nay-sayers either!

It was a silent, but deadly storm (kinda like a fart) and it didn't last all that long, maybe 45 minutes tops. But the damage was incredible. And I slept through it all. I didn't mean to, mind you. But I was relaxed all the way back in my electric recliner with the dogs cowering on the floor below me and I nodded off. What awoke me was a series of transformers in the back yard cracking and popping like the Fourth of July.

And here's where the REAL tragedy hit. I was stuck in my recliner. All the way back, I couldn't scoot out to the footrest for fear that my weight might break it. Mercifully, my phone was next to me so I texted my wife with the tragic news. (Sidebar: While I was suffering the utmost in indignity and tragedy, my wife was gallivanting across the country with her mother, just having a merry ol' carefree time. The nerve!).

I wrote, "The power just went out and I'm stuck in our electric recliner with no way out!"

In return, I got no sympathy. Just much, much laughter and they shared my terrible predicament on our family group text thread. STILL no sympathy.

Finally, I put on my contortion pants and managed to roll sideways out of the recliner onto the other half of the love seat while my dogs watched this all in horrified bemusement, thinking "crazy-ass human."

Okay! Out of the loveseat! Now what? My phone was getting low on its battery, so I thought I'd call everybody I knew. But I couldn't get a clear message out and my texts weren't sending. However, I was able to get through to the electricity robot to report our outage, so that wasted a couple minutes. Finally, my neighbors got a text through to me and asked if I wanted to join them on a little neighborhood walk to survey the damage. I jumped at the chance, having not had human contact in over a week.

Except I couldn't get out of the house. A huge bunch of branches blocked my exit, barricading the stoop and stairs. With the help of my neighbor, we managed to move them and I tasted freedom! 

The damage was intense throughout the 'hood. Trees were downed everywhere. My deck furniture had all overturned, the table hurled out into the yard, the top having spun off like a Frisbee. There were more tree limbs covering yards than grass. Houses were damaged by fallen trees, windows had imploded (not sure how), and people were out in their yards taking in the catastrophe in stunned disbelief. It looked like a war-torn, devastated bomb-site.

Not really wanting to go sit by myself in the dark, I asked the neighbors to join me for a margarita on my deck. Hallelujah, they accepted.

You know, the first night was kinda fun in a strange way. There I was kicking it old school, like the pioneers of yesteryear, hanging out and reading by candlelight. Cool! I was somewhat giddy because I knew--absolutely KNEW--that the power would be restored sometime in the night and all would soon go back to being cool and comfy and kosher again.

So much for naïve optimism. After my neighbors left, I managed to bypass the electric company robot and got a person on the phone. She said, "Hmmm, let's see... Yes, there's been an outage reported in your area. Annnnnnddddd....okay, it looks like they had it set to be fixed by 5:30. Considering it's 9:00, that didn't happen. You're not alone, sir. There are 200,000 houses without electricity."

"200,000 houses! Um...then it's going to be a minute, isn't it?"

"Yes sir."

My heart sank along with any hopes of this being a temporary, minor electricity-free set-back. And with my phone dying, there was absolutely NOTHING to do. Potato chips were the only thing I could find in the dark to eat, not the most well-balanced meal in the world. And I know my wife has a battalion of flashlights strategically placed around the house for such an emergency, but I couldn't find a single one. Not in the dark, not with my phone on its last legs.

Remember what I said about being giddy, enjoying the ol' pioneer days as our ancestors had? By day two, I was kinda grumbly and mumbly, getting kinda pissy, sweating and bored and desperately needing some kind of human interaction and distraction.

By day three, I was like "SCREW Davey Crockett and those other pioneer guys! They never even knew the comforts--no...the NECESSITY--of air conditioning and electric lights so they were perfectly content to sit around campfires in their stupid coon-skin caps, doing absolutely NOTHING! DICKS! They probably didn't even READ!"

Thankfully, my daughter felt bad and came down the next day and took me to dinner before sending me back inside to the infernal house of doom and gloom, to sit in the dark and drink beer because there was nothing else to do.

Talk about tragic.

The next day, hey, whaddaya know? Another thunderstorm! Huzzah! Thus making it even too dark to read. In the meantime, I took to running my car in the driveway to charge up my phone. But after calling and/or texting everyone, I resorted to gaming. Which immediately sapped my battery again.

Our upstairs bedroom was absolutely sweltering, so I moved downstairs to the guest bedroom. But one of my dogs wouldn't come down, his whole existence being thrown into total disarray. So, in the dark, I stumbled up there, picked him up (his paws swimming at the air and fighting me) and carried him downstairs. Managed to do it without breaking a limb, too, a minor miracle.

And I was in for a horrible sweaty night. 

The kicker of it is while our entire block was out of electricity, all of the neighbors across the street never lost their power. Another of my fellow suffering neighbors said that after this was all over, we should have a party and not invite the people across the street. I agreed. We didn't want those stupid-head, electricity-enjoying jerks at our party, no way. Not after lording it over us lowly electricity-deficient people across the street. JERKS.

Meanwhile (when my phone had a full charge), I mercilessly stalked the power company's website map, taking note of when (if?) they'd ever assign a team to our problem. Sometimes we'd come close, with a team being assigned, only to have it go back to "waiting to be assigned." Over and over and over...

It turned out that there was a MAJOR problem with our block. Behind us and down about three houses, a colossal tree had toppled and completely broke off an electric pole. (A neighbor told me, 'Too bad the tree didn't fall the other way and take out the "Vets For Trump' sign.") So, the company took a look at that, shook their heads, and said, "Nope! We're not gonna waste four trucks and sixteen hours on a measly 60 houses being without power, when we can go for the larger outages in less time, and suck up all the heroic glory!" We had become marginalized because there weren't enough homes without power in our 'hood. We were near last in line.

The icing on the cake? The guy whose tree toppled the electric pole? He wasn't worried, because he had a ginormous, loud-ass generator! I felt like pounding on his door and yelling "let me in! I wanna stream some Netflix, dammit! Jerk-face! Hope you're enjoying your air conditioning!"

But hope springs eternal! My wife was finally--FINALLY--due back on the third day! HURRAH! Someone to share in my suffering and listen to my complaining and empathize with my endless pain!

The minute she stepped into the hot box, she said, "Uh-uh. Not doing it. Pack up! I found a dog-friendly hotel."

At long last (thanks to my friend, Yvonne, one of the last hold-outs on our street and my eyes on the ground), power was restored! HooRAH! And booooooooooo to the thousand dollars worth of food we had to toss out.

See what I mean by "tragedy?"

I swan (and you guys KNOW I hate "swanning") if any idiot climate change deniers starts spouting off their crap to me about how it's all bunk, I think a well-placed punch to their neck is a totally acceptable response. Then I'll lock them up in a hot box for four nights and five days.

Speaking of morons, they don't come any dumber than the protagonist of my comical murder mystery Zach and Zora series. You see, Zach (a male stripper, but call him a "male entertainment dancer"),  a dunderhead's dunderhead, just can't help but continue to find dead bodies of which he's usually implicated for the murder. Thankfully, his sharp (but much aggravated and usually pregnant) sister, Zora, is an accomplished sleuth who digs him out of more jams than a butter knife. Read the books that nobody's talking about and absolutely no one is clamoring for a fourth in the series (but it's coming one day, anyway), and start with the first, Bad Day in a Banana Hammock.