Tales from the Dark Side

A potent wind and rainstorm pummeled Western Washington on Tuesday, resulting in power outages for the BVG's. Oh yes, many more people were affected, hundreds of thousands, actually, and some people are still without power two and a half days later. For some communities, power will not be restored until this weekend. I pity these people, because we nearly froze our buns off over a two-day period. Well, I wish I could have. If you're going to be frozen, you might as well get something good from it, like a better physique. No such luck.

It never ceases to amaze me the number of times I try to turn on the lights when the lights are out. I wonder how many times I did this in a period of 26 hours. We don't have a generator, and we don't have a gas fireplace, so we huddled around the fire my husband made in the family room fireplace. With two blankets on me in my recliner, while wearing my coat, warm scarf and gloves, I stayed fairly comfortable. Then I made the trek upstairs to our cold bedroom and crawled in bed wearing long pants, long nightgown, hooded coat and gloves, with two extra blankets. I stayed pretty warm, while my husband had at most two hours of sleep downstairs while he kept the fire going in the fireplace. Much gratitude to The Duke!

There was much rejoicing when the power came back at 2:30 yesterday but also much grumbling when we discovered last night that our cable was still out. Everything we had DVR'd for Tuesday and Wednesday just didn't happen. The cable didn't come back until late this evening, and even now, we don't have our Wi-Fi connection. Life is tough.

No, not really. Not for us. Three people lost their lives during this storm. People have had to be rescued from rapidly rising flood waters in several places. People had their homes inundated with water and mud. We got cold and missed a few mindless TV shoes. How can we complain?

Times like these just require an emergency kit and a good sense of humor. My husband and I are resilient. Before he built the fire he had the kerosene lanterns and hurricane lamps filled and working, while I got the candles set up. And then, with no TV, no computer, and no cell phones at our disposal, we resorted to "Amish Scrabble," played by kerosene lantern. ("No lights, camera, action!") I sent the picture below to our three children, told them we were playing Scrabble like the Amish do, by kerosene lantern, to which our daughter responded, "Dad's suspenders go a long way to add to the illusion." Couldn't find a black hat for him though, and he doesn't have a beard anymore. The second photo shows the tiles I picked on my first draw of the game. They inspired me to invent this joke that would only make sense to other classical musicians:

Q     How does a popular Classical cellist go on tour?

A     By 'YOYOBUS.'

Don't worry, my husband didn't get it either.