Powerless

It's easy to be grateful for things when suddenly you have to do without.

Yesterday as Penny and I were getting ready for the day, the power in our building flickered. When it came back on, I thought, "Phew! That would be rough to be without power in this building!" And then 10 seconds later, the power went out. And stayed off.

It had been rainy and windy all morning, and I assumed it was something to do with the storm.

I'm happy it happened when it did. Penny and I had already watched Tuesday's episode of Glee, and had the power been out 5 minutes earlier, I would have still been rinsing soap off a slippery, squirmy toddler. As it was, I just didn't have the chance to dry my hair, which is not the worst thing in the world.

The bathroom lights don't work with the power out. Neither does anything in the kitchen, the laundry room, or the furnace room. As I was trying to find things to do, I kept wanting to do my online class. But obviously that wouldn't work either! We ended up just playing with toys and taking a really long nap.

Our housekeeper still came, even though the vacuum didn't work and she had to clean the bathrooms in the dark. If it were up to me, I would have given her the day off, but our complex didn't feel the same way I did. I am grateful and spoiled to have someone come help me clean house every week. I'm sure that, compared with the apartments of single people who work all day and then come home to a microwaved Lean Cuisine. See, we thoroughly USE our house. I bake stuff and otherwise use almost every single dish, and I use our bathroom washcloths to clean Penny after meals. They get a little bit food-covered and gross. This is, again, probably not the case in many neighboring apartments. So I always work really hard to clean up the apartment before our housekeeper comes. She has her jobs to do, but they don't include cleaning UP after us. I'm very grateful that she comes.

Yesterday afternoon, I met with a friend from church. It just so happened that she came while the elevators were out of service. So instead of meeting her in the lobby and hiking up 8 flights of stairs, we just packed a baby bag and met in the activities room. Penny's favorite activity in the activity room is leaving and closing the doors behind her. I just let her come in and out, but at one point, someone in the lobby started hollering about "a baby here with no mom around." Hmmm... that was mine! After that, we closed the doors with Penny INSIDE. Novel concept.