The Outage and the Full Moon

I got special permission to tell this story, cause it the hardest I've laughed in quite some time.

A few nights ago, Adam and I were gearing up for the Big East Conference Championship (basketball, for those of you blessed with husbands less interested in sports) where our team, the Louisville Cardinals, would be playing for their first conference title since joining this conference. Just a few minutes before the game was supposed to start, our power suddenly blinked and then the entire house went dark.

Adam and I stared at each other in disbelief. We've lived in this house for about five years, and have yet to loose power--even through the windstorm of Ike and the ice storm a few months ago. We opened our front door, and walked out into the front yard under a perfectly clear sky. All our neighbors still had power, except for our neighbors in the house just to our left, who had also walked out into their front yard. We chatted and it was decided we would both call the power company in the hopes of getting a faster repair.

I think the guy at the power company must have been angry I took him away from his book or something, because I have never felt more stupid than I did talking to him. I told him the power was out, and he asked me if "all" of it was out, or just some. (I'm thinking, "Yup, I turned out the lamp and then called you.") Then he wanted to know if there was a noise when the power went out. I told him just the noise of it going off. So he told me that electricity is "mysterious" (he seriously said that) and doesn't make a sound when it goes out, as if he's catching me in a lie or something. I told him I meant the noise the TV and everything else in the house made when it suddenly went off. So then he asked if it is just us, or other people on our street. I told him it was us and just the neighbor next door, and he tells me that no, it should be us and then next five houses. So at this point I start to wonder if he actually shut our power off himself since he seems to know so much. I tell him it is only us, and he keeps insisting more people should be without power and wants us to check again. He asks if I am calling from a phone I can take outside. (Now it is my turn to be sassy) So I tell him since the power is out our cordless phone doesn't work. At that point I was fed up, so I told him to call Adam's cell phone and talk to him. Adam finally convinced him we weren't making it up, and the guy agreed to send a truck out.

Once the truck arrived, the workman walked back along the backyard fence between our house and our neighbors' house to shine his flashlight on the transformer. Adam and I had nothing better to do with no power, so we both pressed our faces against the glass of the two tall windows in the kitchen in the back of our house to watch.

Suddenly, the workman turned, shined his flashlight back toward the house, and started to walk toward us. Adam had walked away from the window a few seconds earlier, but I just stood there like a deer in the headlights. I couldn't figure out if I should run away so he wouldn't see me gawking at him in my thin nightgown, or stand there and pretend I was casually looking out the window at something else in the darkness. I started questioning Adam about what I should do and if he thought the workman could really see me. In the panic, I guess my fight-or-flight response must have finally kicked in because almost involuntarily I whipped around to run back toward the center of the room.

And when I did, that's when I saw it--the full moon. Adam was standing in the middle of the kitchen, mooning the workman (and me). Truthfully, I really doubt the workman could see. But instead of worrying about if the guy saw me, I found myself rolling on the floor, laughing harder than I have in a long time.

You gotta love a man who can diffuse a tense situation.

So it turned out the transformer was bad, and they had our power back on in a few hours. Sorry, no pictures for this post...I'll just keep that one to myself. But I'll be laughing for a long time.