It Could Always Be Worse...

I haven't posted in a week or so. There really hasn't been much to tell. I'm still on the mend from the ankle fracture, and I've reached the hurry up and wait stage of my convalesence. I go to the orthopedist, they take more x rays, the doctor looks at my ankle, says everything looks like it's progressing normally, and sends me out to the receptionist to make another apointment.

One of the incisions became infected a week ago. Thankfully I caught it early enough before it became a serious problem, but for a few days it was red and swollen and hurt like hell. The antibiotics seem to have taken care of that problem.

I'm pretty much off the Percocet (finally!), but still have some left in the event that anything flares up again. So how better to celebrate the liberation from the narcotics than a drink or two?

That was the plan for the evening. I'd had to work on Labor Day, which was actually a good thing. My phone doesn't ring much on holidays, so it allows me the opportunity to get a lot of clerical work off my desk. I wrapped up most of my end of the month duties, answered a few animal calls (raccoons on decks, bat with a broken wing, box turtle with a broken shell) and headed home a little bit before five.

Ahhh. It's Miller Time. Or Captain Morgan and Diet Coke time, as the case may be.

I'd settled in with a rerun of The Simpsons (while reading a message board or two) when Roger Mexico called. We'd been playing telephone tag all weekend, and we were comparing notes on good but disturbing films (Happiness, Apocalypse Now) and the weather (he was watching a huge rainstorm, and I wondered if it was the same one I'd watched when I got home from work) when...

WHOOOMP!

"Huh."

"What's that?"

"My power just went out. There is darkness at Chez Myo."

"Oh. Huh." He was silent for a moment. "Do you need to go change a fuse or something?"

"Roger, I'm on crutches and the fuse box is in the basement." The table lamp next to the laptop was trying to flicker on, reaching half power and fading back into darkness. "Besides, I don't think it's just my building." I glanced out the window. "The streetlight's out. So are all of the lights at the funeral home. I think it's my whole damn street."

"Shit, that sucks. What're you going to do?"

"I'll be fine. I've got my cel phone, and that has an alarm clock on it. I have a glass of water and my Captain and Coke. I've got smokes. My phone works, and I have excellent company on the other end at the moment. And I've got almost three hours of power on the laptop battery, which is good since it's the only light working in the place. Ugh. But I lost my wireless connection. Looks like I'll be playing solitaire until I fall asleep."

"Uh huh. And where is the bathroom?"

"Ummm... somewhere beyond the black hole that used to be the dining room. Guess I'll be finding out if I can balance a flashlight while I'm tipsy and on crutches." Luckily, there was a flashlight on the coffee table. Between the lightning strikes on the 4th of July and the Great Blackout last month, I'd gotten paranoid and tended to keep a few flashlights in easy to reach places around the house. It's that Girl Scout thing.

"It could be worse. You could've been in the shower." (Did I mention that I can finally shower? Mom and I bought one of those little plastic stools that go inside the bathtub. After a month of sponge bathing for fear of slipping and falling and cracking my head open, the simplicity of an actual shower - even one with mediocre water pressure - was pure ectascy.)

After some technical difficulties (the rainstorm was wreaking havoc with Roger Mexico's cel phone reception, and he had to call me back twice), we chatted for a while longer until he had to retire for the evening (he teaches class on Tuesdays, so he tries to be somewhat responsible on Monday nights). I hung up the phone and listened to the silence of my apartment. My laptop had gone to sleep, leaving me almost completely in the dark. My neighbors seemed to have taken the power outage as a sign to go to bed. Of course, I couldn't sleep.

It was quiet. Too quiet.

Great. I was thirty minutes into a blackout, and I was already going mad. Since there is usually some sort of electronic device on at my apartment, the void of no radio no television no internet was kind of unnerving. I switched my laptop back on and lost a game or two of solitaire.

And then, of course, I did have to go to the bathroom.

Managing the flashlight wasn't as difficult as I'd worried it would be. Dodging cats was another story. I made it to the bathroom just as the flashlight started to flicker. Oh no.

I crutched into the bedroom to get the little green flashlight I'd tucked into the armoire, and then realized I had no free hand to carry it back to the living room. And of course, I was wearing my black spandex non-exercise pants with no pockets. Oh well, desparate times called for desparate measures. I tucked the flashlight under the waistband and headed back for home base on the couch. It's not like anyone could see me. (Because it was a blackout, you see. And I was the only one there besides the cats.)

The power came back on while I was typing this, at 12:12 am. The problem was resolved in less than an hour. The worst thing that happened was I missed most of David Letterman. Pretty insignificant compared to all of you that were without power last month for days. I have a new appreciation for all of you and your resolve in a crisis, because I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

So now that power has been restored, I'm retiring for the evening. Hopefully the Captain and Coke will override the insomnia and I'll be able to drift off watching Conan O'Brien on the bedroom TV.

But I'm taking the flashlights with me, just in case. Both of them.