At 5:42 am this morning, I awoke to the sound stopping on my Holmes ionizer air filtration machine. Quiet. I knew immediately what this meant, the power is out. I use the Holmes ionizer air filter as white noise to help me sleep. Now that the power was out, I was wide awake. It was just as well because I had a dental appointment in Dover at 9 am. With the power outage, I’m just getting up earlier than I had planned to. Oh joy.
The New Year continues to greet me with a series of frustrations to try my patience. I’m losing it. Yesterday I got my DIRECTV fixed so I could receive my satellite television. Another little fire put out. But then when I went to work I noticed that my wrist watch had stopped. Oh why not? The battery was dead. I took the watch off because all I would do would look at it as if it was still keeping time. So I went to work, looking at a bare wrist. Down here in Slower Lower (Sussex County, Delaware), one doesn’t walk into a jewelry shop and buy a watch battery and ask them to change it. That’s a service that isn’t done in Slower Lower. I know. I’ve tried only to be met with a curt “We don’t do that!” Since I was traveling back to civilization this morning (Dover), I would get it done there (which I did.)
I forget to mention that yesterday (Wednesday), I was awakened by the sound of the trash truck. Our trash can was in the garage. Of course it should have been out by the mailbox so my new trash hauler (Moore) could pick it up. Our previous trash hauler, Waste Management, picked up the trash later in the morning so Bill didn’t put out our can until 8 or 9. Apparently, Moore gets started earlier. I quickly threw on some clothes and rushed to the garage. I pushed the automatic door opener and, sure enough, the Moore trash behemoth was several house up Whitehall Drive, picking up my neighbor’s can. I wheeled out my can and parked it at the edge of my driveway, hoping they would see me and take pity. They weren’t in the pitying mood yesterday morning. After loudly dropping my neighbor’s giant green plastic trash can (everyone wake up!), their truck pulled away and drove off into the morning light of Whitehall Drive. Yes, I would be keeping my trash for another week. Somewhere in the bottom of that can is a rotten potato. Ever smell a rotten potato? The dark brown spot on a rotten potato quickly liquefies and turns into an all enveloping permeating smell the likes of which is hard to describe. Not as bad as a skunk but not a smell you would want lingering on your clothes and house. I’m hoping I get a break on that potato. I don’t need to smell that for the next week until the trash men come back next Wednesday. Oh yes, we will take out the trash early next week. We don’t need a big learning curve on this one.
So the power was out this morning. What a wonderful start for the new day. This brought back memories of when we used to live in Pennsylvania. We lived on 7 acres of wooded land in East Brandywine Township. Our power went out on the average of twice a month. We had a whole routine. Usually a strong wind would take out the power. The area we lived had so many trees and invariably a strong wind would break off a dead branch that would take the power out. Sometimes the outages would only be for a few hours and sometimes a day. On once occasion, it was out for a week. This was another reason I moved to Delaware and away from trees. I never did get used to living with all those power outages. Since we have lived in Delaware (November 2006), this is only the third outage. None of them have been longer than a few hours. This one I think was caused by a deterioration of the phone line. As Bill and I drove out of our development this morning for my 9 am Dental appointment in Dover, we saw the electric company trucks repairing the line. Interesting, the repairman for DIRECTV was in yesterday repairing corroded connections on our satellite hookup and today the electric company was repairing a corroded electric line. Even more irony, my dental appointment was to take out my upper left bridge and the one tooth holding it to be replaced by a partial denture. I don’t know, it seems like everything is falling apart this year, including me.
