Electricity

The other night about 11:00 we were awakened by an explosion. Not an exploding house or anything that dramatic, but we were both startled and almost simultaneously said "What was THAT?" A quick look out the window confirmed out suspicions that it was probably a transformer somewhere close by because all the street lights were out, and a glance at my bedside bookshelf bore that out as my electric alarm clock was dark. We were out of electricity.

Now, normally that's not a huge problem - the fridge stays cold for hours and, after all, it was the middle of the night so we didn't need lights. But from my husband I heard the sentence that made us both groan: "The pumps will be out". We are still pumping water out of our basement and if the electricity didn't come on pretty quickly there'd be no hot water in the morning. Sigh!

Sure enough, there was no hot water and the water in the basement had risen to about 8 inches again. The furnace pilot light has been unlit since March, but the hot water heater we've managed to keep going most of the time. As soon as I was dressed and downstairs I called to report the outage and within an hour I had a call back from the lighting company. They assured me we'd have our electricity back by about 10am. Sure enough, about 9:30 a truck pulled up across the street and, after about 15 minutes sitting in the truck (for whatever reason), someone emerged, grabbed a long pole, reached up to the top of the electric wires and within 3 minutes the television clicked - our power was back. When he put his pole away he started walking toward the house so I opened the window and let him know it was indeed on. He told me that at least 3 poles had problems within this small area of the village. I suspect the explosion was close by but not the one right by our house.

It's amazing how dependent we are on our electricity. I sat around for hours that morning wondering what to do with myself. There was no TV, no computer, no oven or stove, and it was too early to leave the house because there isn't a store opened at 8am. I should have found a book to read but instead I curled up on the couch and re-read a magazine. I was so glad when the lights came back on....