thank goodness the baby swing is battery powered

Today I decided to be productive. I had it all planned out. I was going to spend the morning with the kids, put them down for their naps at 11:30, cook a big one pot meal to eat from for the next couple of days, clean the kitchen, vacuum, and then when the kids woke up, I was going to go to post to demand the money they short changed me yesterday.

Yeah... none of that happened. W went down for his nap at 11:45 but CB didn't want to. I started cooking around 1 and she started crying around 1:15. I fed her while the meal was cooking, praying she would finally fall asleep. She did around 1:30 and I was just about to get up to put her down when I heard a loud pop, followed by an even louder scream. Then it was silent. Eerily silent. Then there was more screaming.

I realized then that the power had gone out and being the paranoid person I am, I concluded the screaming was because W had figured out the plug covers and had electrocuted himself, making the power go out. So I flew up the stairs as fast as I could only to find he wasn't electrocuted, but just really scared because the pop and subsequent silencing of his noisemaker had woken him up.

Dang. What was I going to do? There's no man around and this is, for sure, Man's Work. I went next door to find out if they had power, and they did, so the husband came to my rescue. He found the circuit breaker and flipped it. And it flipped right off. And he flipped it again and it flipped right off. Over and over. Well, that must be the problem. duh.

Eventually I tracked down the number for the housing office, who's machine told me to call another number, who gave me a number to call, and then they gave me another number to call. All of this being done on the neighbor's phone because we, being modern people, don't have a phone that works without power. (Don't worry, I'll be getting one tomorrow...) They told me they would send someone out to fix it.

2 hours later, that someone still wasn't there. I was starving. Famished, actually. I hadn't eaten all day. The meal I was making was ruined because it didn't cook and had been sitting out too long to be saved. I couldn't get something out of the fridge because we all know you have to stand in front of the open refrigerator for 10 minutes while you look over every shelf repeatedly to find something that you actually want to eat. I can't afford to lose the entire content of my fridge right now from letting all the cold air out. (Really, all that is in there right now is caramel topping, ketchup, and old carrots. Yuck.) Everything in the freezer has to be microwaved to eat so that wasn't an option. So I was left with whatever was in the pantry that didn't have to be cooked. Yummy. Wheat Thins and M&Ms, not such a great combo and definitely doesn't satisfy a hungry stomach.

It's amazing how quiet the house is without power. No hum of the fridge or computer allowed me to hear the clocks tick, which was totally annoying because the 4 clocks in the downstairs area don't tick in unison. They are all a millisecond off from each other. It reminds me of a rhythmically challenged person clapping loudly on the off beat during a church worship service. Annoying, to say the least.

It's also amazing what you can get done when you aren't distracted by electrical things. I was able to read a magazine, file my nails and even go through the Pottery Barn catalog. Because I need an $89 ceramic bowl vase that holds an enormous amount of artichokes to put in my living room, as seen on page 5 or here. Actually, I would probably have nice Pottery Barn like decorations in my house, if I could guarantee that W wouldn't use them to mark the strike zone for his pitching practice.

Finally at around 4, the guy showed up to fix my power. He flipped the circuit breaker and the power came back on. And stayed on. So he left but not before he made sure to look at me like I was an idiot because he came all the way out here just to flip a stupid switch... Something any smart person would know how to do. 4 minutes later, the power was out again. It's gone out 3 more times since I've started writing this and the people at the 4th phone number are telling me there isn't anything they can do until Monday.

Tonight, we will most likely dine by Maglite, if I ever manage to be able to cook. If you don't hear from me for a couple of days, it's because we're living Survivor style: eating bugs, showering in cold water and making fire with sticks. We're going to die.