The funny thing is that I have been talking about electric outages lately, and in the back of my mind, I was knocking on wood because I hadn’t had one for a long time, till last night.

I was just about to share this site on Facebook. Do you like eerie? I do.  Well the abandonment of populations kind. These pictures will take you way far away.

It’s been chilly cold, so I had all the windows closed, but I still heard the BOOM SHAKA LAKA BOOM right before the lights and computer and everything else went off and we were in the dark. It’s like midnight or thereabouts, and I think we are in the no-moon or sliver moon category because we were in pitch black darkness. Not fun. Did this happen because I was looking at those eerie pictures?

One of my dogs always freaks out about flickers in electricity, but apparently the total darkness either wasn’t as bad for her, or I just couldn’t see how bad it was for her.

I had luckily put my cell phone near the computer and remembered that, amazing for my memory, so the first thing I did was grab it and call FPL to tell them of the outage. OK, that sounds easier than it was. I had to press 1s and 2s and that part was not easy. Without light, I missed a few times and pushed the buttons above the 1s and 2s. I’m surprised I even finished the call, but I did, and the report was noted.

Then, I used what little glow I had from that cell phone to walk to the kitchen from the back room where I had tea lights and one of those long lighter dealies. When I managed to light one tea light, I felt better. Then I pulled down some glass tea light holders and realized just how much a difference it made when using a big ol’ glass pumpkin like tea light holder compared to just the tea light. The big ol’ glass pumpkin lit the living room up nicely. I had a couple other glass pumpkins that were smaller and I placed them around the house. I started to feel better.

I grabbed the emergency battery operated fluorescent lamp from the bathroom floor, and pressed the button several times, and nothing! Ugh. So much for that. So I went in search of the glass hurricane candles I had somewhere, and believe it or not, I found them. Though they were very used, I had enough wax in the three I found to make it light enough in the house to maneuver around and make it through the night.

When I came back through the hall, do you know that my emergency fluorescent light had turned itself on. Somehow. I don’t know how, but it made a big difference. After that, I was able to close down for the night, shut everything off that I knew had been on, and go to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night I heard something click, so I knew the electricity was back on. The hurricane candles burned all night, and I blew them out in the morning.

Today I bought three more hurricane candles from the dollar store so we are ready to go for the next power outage.  Usually power outages happens in warm weather, which is the norm here in South Florida.  Chilly is rare, but a few blankets usually does the job.  I cannot imagine how people in the north deal with power outages in frigid weather. How do they not freeze?