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Last night my neighborhood experienced not ONE, but TWO power outages, each within minutes of each other. Normally, power outages don’t bother me. They are often annoying inconveniences, but last night I had a minor scare. It wasn’t really the outage itself that scared me, nor was it the darkness, but it was the timing of the power outage that freaked me out because I was utterly caught off guard at an especially awkward time.

It was late last night, not 1am late, but still late for what I was doing. I was taking a bath after everyone in my household had already gone to bed. I had my bath set up perfectly: Soothing hot water? Check. Charged up iPad? Check. Netflix movie queued up & ready to go? Also check! No interruptions? Check, check, check. Until it had happened. I was lounging comfortably in my bathtub in the middle of watching a Netflix movie. I had already completed the cleansing & washing part of my bath, the business end. So, next came the leisure part of my bath routine, my favorite part of taking a bath. More than soaking in the hot water, I like playing games or watching a Netflix movie on my iPad “Richard” while lounging in the bathtub.

Last night I was particularly relaxed because nobody was up & about with any opportunities to interrupt my relaxing bath. That’s when the power outage decided to rear its ugly & inconvenient head. I was two-thirds in to watching my movie, & all of a sudden I heard a noise, one close to a power source shutting down, then all the lights went out. Barely five seconds later, the power returned. However, I was already feeling alarmed. I jumped out of the bath, grabbed my towel, & woke Jian up to ask him to check the home’s circuit breaker panel. Everything seemed to be in order since the power had come back. The Internet connection had been rebooted, so I had to wait a few minutes to continue watching my movie. Needless to say, I didn’t take this first mini outage as any cue to finish up my bath & go to bed. I hopped right back into my bath, which was still warm, & continued to watch Netflix.

Ten minutes later, I was really becoming engrossed in the movie, & the power goes out again. This time I was a little more on the scared side. The entire neighborhood was covered in pitch black darkness. I’m not afraid of the dark in my own home, mostly because my 90-year old next door neighbor always keeps his kitchen lights on, & it creates a glow that shines all the way to my house. I live on a hill, & my elderly neighbor’s house is on the higher side of the slope (I’m on the lower side of the slope). Our adjoining property-line fence sits lower than most fences because he complains about it blocking his non-existent view. Therefore, his kitchen light shines into my bedroom at night, creating a nice nightlight effect. This helps me to see in the dark, especially if I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee.

This time I was sitting in the bathtub, & all of a sudden everything goes black & the house is eerily quiet (probably because the bathroom ceiling fan went out as well as my movie). The bathroom was so dark I couldn’t even see the door. I got out of the tub again, & woke Jian up yet again to check the house once more. This time the power stayed out for over twenty minutes, & I finally decided to finish my bath. I couldn’t watch anything on Netflix anyway, so I had no interest in sitting in a pool of water bathed in darkness (haha, no pun intended). It felt weird, cleaning up & getting ready for bed by the light of a flashlight & backlight from my smartphone. There was nothing romantic about it, no soft glow, no ambience. It was all shadows & creepy beams of light dancing along the cold walls. I did end up finishing my Netflix movie. The power came back on. More than anything, I felt grateful that though we have many clocks around our house, most of them run on batteries, so the only clocks I had to reset this morning were the ones on the kitchen stove & microwave. Who decides to take a bath late at night in the middle of a power outage? This guy. [Points to myself] Cheers.

Today’s song of the day: