Apr 08 2013
A Dark and Stormy Night
It’s been a strange winter. We had storms and power outages much earlier in the season than usual, and last night, we had one much later than usual.
I woke up around midnight when the power went out. Even though it’s always quiet here, I guess the sudden total silence instead of the humming of the refrigerator and other accoutrements of civilization is noticeable, even in sleep.
I could hear the wind howling – later, I learned that it was gusting up to 45 mph, and in San Francisco, they closed the Great Highway since the winds were so high – and the much-needed rain coming down. The rain seemed much louder without the ambient house humming.
I lay there and thought about how I had just emptied out the emergency pails of water – if you don’t do this early enough in the spring time, they become breeding grounds for undesirables, like mosquitoes – and the fact that I could not grind beans for coffee in the morning. There was no leftover coffee to reheat, either. Between dark thoughts like this, the storm, the kitties’ extra naughtiness, checking the PG&E outage phone number for updates, and watching the hours dwindle on my glowing alarm clock, I didn’t get much sleep.
The power eventually came back on, though, so I was able to make coffee before rushing off to the pool for aquafit. I had to get out of the car and drag a branch out of the muddy driveway, and the road to the Big Town was littered with lesser branches and pine needles. The air smelled like Christmas from the fallen needles and battered pine trees, and the sky was clear blue as if nothing had ever happened.
Maybe it was all a dream.