It Was a Dark and Stormy Night

Alissa Grosso

Monday evening a thunderstorm rolled through our area. There was a threat of a tornado. I don’t believe we had an actual twister touch down here, but it did get mighty windy for a bit. Our yard was spared, but there were numerous trees that came down around town, and as a result we lost power.

If we were smart we would have actually considered the tornado watch we were under when planning our evening, but, what can I say? We don’t always make the wisest decisions. We decided to watch a television show, and then have dinner. As a result, we were in the middle of an episode of Counting Cars when the screen went black.

Although we have a gas grill outside that’s great for cooking on when the power’s out, it’s not the best option when a storm is raging outside. So, we had a power outage dinner—a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for me and tepid chicken soup and cold cuts for Ron.

Using my little battery-powered lantern, I did my best impersonation of the Statue of Liberty to provide some illumination in our otherwise dark kitchen as we made our dinner, opening the refrigerator and shutting it as quickly as possible to try and keep the cold air in.

We couldn’t watch our usual comedies after dinner, so instead we entertained ourselves by laughing at our own ridiculous text string, which is just a seemingly random string of nonsense mostly because we’re usually right next to each other or in adjacent rooms as we’re texting. Thus we often reply by speaking to each other instead of sending a reply text. This leads to a bizarre and disjointed text string that becomes hilarious when you try to make sense of it later.

Texts from Ron to me include a funny video of a man playing a flute because he heard me watching a video with some flute music, a cool chair he saw in a furniture store ad, or just a funny picture of a dog doing yoga, while I text him seemingly random things like a link to a bag of water softener salt. After my observation about our random texts he kept the magic alive by texting me this photo of Captain Kangaroo:

Who needs sitcoms, anyway? All in all, it was a pretty fun evening.

When I woke up the next morning to find the power was still out, I began to grow a little impatient. There was no water left in the pipes for washing hands, so hand sanitizer would have to do. It’s a long story (if you know, you know), but we do have a sort of stash of water that’s more than enough for flushing toilets, but this was going to require hauling it in a bucket. Things were starting to feel a little too much like Little House on the Prairie for my liking. (Well, if Laura Ingalls ever had to haul water up a spiral staircase.) Just as I was standing there in the kitchen pondering heating up some water in a fondue pot to make some tea and oatmeal for breakfast, the power came back on, and our household returned to the twenty-first century. Whew!

Here’s hoping that the storms spared you as well. Stay safe out there, everyone!

— Alissa