Things Like This Aren't Supposed to Happen to Me

Last night when I got home from work I automatically glanced at the answering machine to see if we had received any calls. The light wasn't on. "That's strange," I thought. "The power must have gone out today." Who knows what sort of fickle mild weather could make our electricity go out? It had, after all, been raining. I called C to figure out where the circuit breakers were and pulled those. Nothing. Checked the fuses. Nothing.

Crap. The image of an unpaid electric bill passed through my mind. I called the utility company and sure enough, I was on their naughty list and had been cut off. And since it was, naturally, after regular business hours, I couldn't do anything about it until the next day. I could use the auto-pay function to pay the bill, but had to speak to a real live person to get the account reactivated.

I called Linda and asked if she was in a forgiving mood before explaining what had happened. She had deleted ALL the recorded shows off our DVR (accidentally) a few months ago, so I figured those two accidental events balanced each other out.

Meanwhile, we lit some candles and got out lanterns we had just received at Christmas time as part of an emergency preparedness kit, then went over to C's house to watch TV and eat dinner. We may not have had electricity, but we weren't going to rough it!

When I got home from tap class at about 9:45 Linda was getting ready for bed, which is exceptionally early for her. She said that with no electricity this must have been what the pioneers felt like. "Not exactly," I said. "My iPad still has a full charge so I'm good to go for awhile."

She probably really felt like a pioneer though when she went over to C's house this morning to get ready. She tried taking a shower, but C has been having hot water heater issues lately and the pilot light was out. Linda just ended up dunking her head in cold water instead of taking a cold shower.

When she got home from teaching seminary I was just getting out of my shower. "You had a warm shower?!" she questioned disbelievingly.

"Well, yes," I replied. "The gas bill is paid!" Ha!

Anyway, I was pretty mad at myself last night for letting such a stupid thing happened. "These things aren't supposed to happen to me," I wailed half-jokingly to C.

"Why?" she asked. "Do you think you're immune from doing stupid things?"

Oh. I guess not. In fact, I do an infinite amount of stupid things on a daily basis, I imagine. But as Linda pointed out, I haven't let the electricity get shut off for 11 years of living in the same place, so that's something. I probably don't need to beat myself up for a silly mistake. I need to make sure it doesn't happen again, but don't need to beat myself up over it.

I'll let you draw your own life/gospel analogies here. There are some good ones.