This morning the electricity went out and I thought, “You’re kidding, right? No electricity?!? On Thanksgiving Day?” Unless making a meal in a crock-pot, there aren’t many worse days, cooking prep-wise, to have no power.
I called around to friends in the area, and chatted up our immediate neighbors as we turned out of our homes like ants after a heavy rain, discussing the situation in driveways and over backyard fences. Turns out there’s no power to a fair footprint of our little community, and none of us can get a live person on the phone to report the outage (although we all dutifully followed the automated prompts to tell the lords of technology we were adrift in a sea of … nothing much going on).
Then I called Dad, because he’s one of the four most knowledgeable men I know, and that’s what I do. I got his confirmation the plumbing should work fine (no electric parts), but the house may get cold, because although we have a gas furnace, the blower is electric. Sigh. No problem while the sun is up, but if this lasts any length of time, we could be entering frozen-boogers-indoors territory, and ain’t nobody likes that.
Obviously KCP&L discovered the problem and fixed it, or I’d not be writing this, but the power was out long enough for me to really miss it. We couldn’t look at the news to see what was going on, or pop in a movie, or listen to the radio, or get on the computer and pay bills or pull up the internet. I couldn’t even read a book unless I sat in the window, and it was just too cold sitting there. I couldn’t jump in the shower to get ready for the day because there was no hot water left.
And then I had to laugh, because I now have an appreciation for what my nieces and nephews mean when they whine that there’s nothing to do on those (rare) occasions we adults banish all forms of electronic tomfoolery while the grownups are talking. I believe this must be similar to how they experience being grounded, too (a condition for which I now have much greater empathy).
What this little stint of capricious boredom has reinforced is that I have many things for which to give thanks, and am generally proficient about recognizing them … even if only eventually. I like being a finds-the-silver-lining sort, because that’s just the way it is: no matter the situation, there is some good that comes of it, for some one, some how, every day.
I called around to friends in the area, and chatted up our immediate neighbors as we turned out of our homes like ants after a heavy rain, discussing the situation in driveways and over backyard fences. Turns out there’s no power to a fair footprint of our little community, and none of us can get a live person on the phone to report the outage (although we all dutifully followed the automated prompts to tell the lords of technology we were adrift in a sea of … nothing much going on).
Then I called Dad, because he’s one of the four most knowledgeable men I know, and that’s what I do. I got his confirmation the plumbing should work fine (no electric parts), but the house may get cold, because although we have a gas furnace, the blower is electric. Sigh. No problem while the sun is up, but if this lasts any length of time, we could be entering frozen-boogers-indoors territory, and ain’t nobody likes that.
Obviously KCP&L discovered the problem and fixed it, or I’d not be writing this, but the power was out long enough for me to really miss it. We couldn’t look at the news to see what was going on, or pop in a movie, or listen to the radio, or get on the computer and pay bills or pull up the internet. I couldn’t even read a book unless I sat in the window, and it was just too cold sitting there. I couldn’t jump in the shower to get ready for the day because there was no hot water left.
And then I had to laugh, because I now have an appreciation for what my nieces and nephews mean when they whine that there’s nothing to do on those (rare) occasions we adults banish all forms of electronic tomfoolery while the grownups are talking. I believe this must be similar to how they experience being grounded, too (a condition for which I now have much greater empathy).
What this little stint of capricious boredom has reinforced is that I have many things for which to give thanks, and am generally proficient about recognizing them … even if only eventually. I like being a finds-the-silver-lining sort, because that’s just the way it is: no matter the situation, there is some good that comes of it, for some one, some how, every day.
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