When the Lights Go Out

The lights went out yesterday morning.

Well, hiya, Friends!  Guess what happened at my house this morning!  The electricity went out.  Just like that, boom, BOOM!  No warning flickers, no brown-out, no going off and coming back on.  It just went off!

I wasn't even out of bed yet.  I was watching my ceiling fan go around and around.  That's a hobby of mine. I love chandeliers and ceiling fans.  So when mine stopped going around and around, I was like "Hey!  You're supposed to be going around and around!"  I even drew circles in the air with my index finger to show the ceiling fan the way it's supposed to go.  It didn't follow my instructions.

Vava really hates it when the electricity goes off, because then we can see how much gunk has built up on the fan blades.  We keep 'em spinning all the time, so when they stop, it's not pretty, let's just say.  So that was the second thought that popped into my head, and what do you know.  It wasn't long before in came Vava, with a microfiber cloth and the Pledge Multisurface, and next thing I knew, my whole room was getting a good clean-up!

The next obstacle was my bath.  Now, I usually take a nice bath in my inflatable tub inside the big tub, but we have our own water, not town water, so when there's no electricity, our water pump can't pump water.  I wondered if Vava was going to just sponge me off with wet wipes, but she managed to get me a warm bath with the water in the pipes.  The only catch was that I had to take a bath in a dishpan.  Not even one of our big gray buspans, but a real, honest-to-goodness dishpan.  I'm not gonna complain, though.  It wasn't a wet wipe sponge bath, and the water wasn't cold.  I'll not quibble over the lack of leg room.

I guess what really put me over the edge, electricity-wise, or the lack thereof, is that usually when I'm in my high chair, Vava turns on the chandelier in the dining room for me.  I just love that light.  Love it!  It has twelve lightbulbs that look like candle-flames on it, and it just lights up that room all nice and bright, which is kind of a plus on a gray day like yesterday was for the most part.  But Vava said she couldn't turn on the light, because even if she flipped the switch, the lights wouldn't come on, because there was no electricity coming through the wires.  Then she flipped the switch and showed me it was true.  

As it turns out, no electricity = no lights!

Man, that disappointed me.  I was crying right into my mandarin oranges over that.

Vava finally got through to the Electric Company and found out that the problem was a giant transmission line went offline, and they didn't know how long it was going to be before it was back up and running.  I guess you could say my heart sank when Vava passed that info on to me.  I read an article in the magazine that our electric company puts out.  We get Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative electricity, and they send us a magazine every month, and one month, they had an article all about the different kinds of powerlines.  

Transmission lines are the biggest powerlines that run electricity over the greatest distance, except for ultra-high voltage lines.  Transmission lines are like big arteries for electricity.  They bring the electricity to the substation, where smaller lines run it to neighborhoods and houses.  So the transmission line going offline was like if your femoral artery got severed!  That's a big uh-oh!  Could take a while to get it fixed!

But you know, Vava and I made the best of it.  We got some stuff sorted.  We did some Pledge-and-Clorox Wipes-based cleaning.  I colored on my big white playhouse with my Friendly's crayons.  I'm getting pretty good!  And then, just when I thought I'd never see a glowing light bulb again, I heard the refrigerator kick on, and our phones beep, and the clocks on the microwave and on the regular oven started blinking and wanting to be set, and Vava and I both said "Yay!"

So right now, I'd like to take a paragraph or two to say thank you to the linespeople who go out and hafta fix those big transmission lines, and the ones who fix the substations and who fix the little powerlines that deliver the electricity to neighborhoods and houses!  It's a dangerous job, since as Vava says, even the outlets in my house are dangerous, and those wires are teeny-tiny compared to a whole transmission line.  Those linespeople hafta keep their wits about them and make sure safety's first!  So I sure appreciate those linespeople!

But hey, we got through it, didn't we, Big People!  We got through it!

And, too, I gotta shout out to the people that answer the telephones at the Electric Company.  Boy, I betcha that can be a thankless job, especially on the day the grid goes down.  I watched Vava when she called, and she just pushed buttons on our red phone in the kitchen and didn't say anything.  She said she opted to check the automated line, because she knew the electric company was aware that the power was out, and she just wanted to know why and for how long.  But I guess sometimes, people can yell at those people who answer the telephones, and I've just gotta say, don't yell at the people who answer the telephones, Big People!  They probably didn't make the electricity go off!  And we all want it back on, so we should be nice to the people who answer the telephone.

In the end, I pretty much think my Electric Company rocks.  Thank you for all your hard work, Tri-County Rural Electric Cooperative!  Zoe loves you!  Muah!