Grieving the loss of electricity
Last week I, like many of you, came home to a devastating discovery: no electricity.
And, like any great shock, it was met first with disbelief. This must be a mistake, I thought. I paid my hydro bill, right? Did I? Pretty sure I did. And anyway, they’d send me a warning letter or something, wouldn’t they? No, this is wrong. I’ll just phone them to straighten this out and hopefully it’ll be back up in five minutes. I mean, this can’t go past five minutes, right?
As I waited on hold to speak to an actual live human at the utility company, simultaneously scrolling through last month’s bill payments on my phone to ascertain that yes, I did pay that bill, disbelief turned to anger.
How much do we pay for hydro? A lot. Can they at least hire a few more people to answer the damn phones so we can get answers about when we might expect our very expensive electricity to return? And when I finally do connect with a human, can she please be knowledgeable enough about Hamilton that when I say I’m in Dundas, she doesn’t respond with, “Is that near Upper Wentworth or Upper James?” No. Dundas. West end. “Oh, you must be in Stoney Creek. Yes, we have an outage in Stoney Creek and Winona, extending into St. Catharines …” GAH.
I glanced down at my phone. The battery bar was starting to inch downwards. The internet tells me there are two types of people in this world: lunatics who let their phone batteries go until they’re drained of every molecule of power. And normal people like me, who panic the minute the phone battery dips below 97 per cent. I was now at 89 per cent.
No internet. No electricity. Phone battery power rapidly dissipating. The full force of what was happening washed over me like a Kanye West tweet on the Twitterverse. I paced. I phoned.
I tweeted. The pets, not grasping this new routine, followed me in circles around the house. What was I expected to do now? Read a book? Geez. But that’s what I decided to do. In the face of adversity, we must innovate, think outside the box. So I grabbed one of the books I bought a million years ago before subscribing to Netflix and decided to give this new, sedate form of entertainment a go.
It was fine. I guess. A strange new sensation I think some people refer to as “calm.” Until I started to doze off, that is, which is … ridiculous. If it was just a titch less windy outside, I could take the dog for a walk, I thought. But she was all stressed out from that flower pot flying into her head when she went out earlier. So that’s out.
If I had electricity, I could hop on the treadmill, I suppose. The one I bought for just such occasions (albeit with power), when the weather outside is frightful and … oh, who am I kidding? If I had hydro, I’d be working. Or watching Netflix. Or doing something else entirely. Treadmill … pfft. Why do I even still have it?
And if I was to get rid of the treadmill, what would I write in the ad? Please take this constant reminder of my failings as a fit person off my chubby little hands? It’s almost brand new, barely used at all, stickers still in place. And for your dollars you’ll get a slice of hope — much like buying a lottery ticket, as a former boss was wont to say. Which, I mean, is kind of depressing when your boss is throwing money at hope in the form of lottery tickets, but this machine will be a positive force in your life. Really. Because even if you don’t use it as treadmill, it stands in well as a laundry pile holder or as a resting spot for the extra cushions from your bed.
Oh ya, did I mention I squeezed that sucker right in next to my bed so I’d really have no excuse to use it? But, alas, I did find a way. It does do great things for my piles of laundry, though.
Again, if I could spare an ounce of battery power, the virtual world would be my oyster. But I couldn’t. So I finally accepted my situation and just went to bed. At 8 p.m.
The hydro returned the next morning and I got to engage in another fun new exercise: chucking all the contents of the fridge and cleaning it from top to bottom. It might just be wishful thinking, but is it too much to ask that this not happen again any time soon?