It happened suddenly yesterday morning, I was answering email and Hubby-Wan was heating up Padawan-Wan's waffle for breakfast when..... zzzzzzzzzeeeeump......
The power went out.

Horror of horrors the tv dared to go out as well and Padawan-Wan flipped out. We are not necessarily one of those families where the tv is on 24/7, padawan plopped in front of the boob-tube vegging out turning his brain to mush. But, I am not above using the tv throughout the day as a way of keeping the padawan out from underfoot. So he does have certain shows he loves to watch, Curious George being one of them. When there is no access to the tv during that "special time" on Saturday morning, everyone better watch out, it's gonna be a rough day.

I have vowed in the recent past to not touch the computer on the weekends: no message boards, no blogs, no internet, no email, but it fails miserably. I've discovered living in Vegas that more people choose to use email as the first form of communication. We have a birthday party to go to and of course the invitation came via email! So, my vow of computer celibacy Saturdays & Sundays fails miserably otherwise I would be missing important messages. When the power went out, I was reading directions to said birthday party. Without the internet how could I use Yahoo! Maps to find my way?

I crawled downstairs to find Hubby pacing frantically. "I can't make my coffee, I can't cook my eggs, we don't have any milk for cereal, what are we going to eat?" In a stroke of luck, we were supposed to go grocery shopping yesterday morning so we did not have even half the items in our fridge we normally would, things that would spoil should the power stay off. Hubby grabbed a pop tart, I finished the padawan's soggy waffle. Tummy's full, we had now rethink our entire day.

We called the electric company to find out that the power was out throughout our area - it was a significant outage spanning a few miles in each direction. Would there be traffic lights? Was the grocery store even open? And why bother shopping when everything would spoil after we got it into our powerless refrigerator? We needed to think of something fast, the Padawan was beginning to panic.

It was a perfect day for a walk so we got dressed, headed out to the footpath that is near our house. We figured tiring out the padawan would be a great way to settle him down, he was so worried about the power being out that he even was worried about the cat surviving this!! The walk definitely took his mind off of things until it was time to go home. Ok, time to think again... let's call Gramma-Wan & Grampa-Wan and see if they're up for a visit. Grandparents are always the greatest weapon in any parent's arsenal!

We packed the cooler to bring a few "essentials" to my parents' house to store in their fridge & freezer until the crisis was over (Ben & Jerry's & tater tots pretty much all that was left in our freezer on shopping day!). As we unloaded the ice cream into my parents' freezer they had a good chuckle at our expense - that the only thing worth saving was the B&J. "Where's your eggs? Milk?" my mom kept asking. Our response: "Don't care. Don't care. Don't care." God save us if my Vermonty Python turns into a milkshake, there will be hell to pay if that happens.

After a brief visit with my parents, of course the padawan being stuffed full of snacks in the process, we headed out to lunch. We discovered a really nice Chinese restaurant right around the corner from my parents. We have to remember to tell them about it. Then off to shopping for a fake xmas tree. Yup.... we're breaking down & buying a fake tree this year. Hubby-Wan & I have been together for 10 xmases and have always had live trees. But upon further thought out here we weren't sure what sorts of interesting creatures would be brought into the house via the tree. If we didn't have a cat, I might be inclined to try just once, but my cat is a monster, he'll attack anything that moves, scorpion, gopher snake, tarantula. I don't want to come home one day to find a dead cat with a huge spider stuck to his face like that guy in Alien. I'd never be right again!

New fake tree in the trunk, we hoped that the electricity would be back on. Not because *we* had anything important we needed to do with the computer or the tv or washing machine, but because the padawan was about to blow a gasket over not being able to play LEGO SW 2 when we got home. As we neared our driveway, I pressed the button on the garage door opener and.... It worked!! Hooray! We're saved!!

The Padawan shot out of the car the second I opened the door and made a beeline for the PS2. It had been almost 6 hours since he'd heard the sweet buzzing of the refrigerator & seen the tv screen anything but black. He did not handle this blackout very well, he acted as though it was the end of the world. But seriously, November in Vegas we're comparatively warm to other places so it's not like we were in danger of freezing to death and because the blackout was during the day it's also not that we would use lights. I was surprised at his reaction. I just hope we don't suffer another blackout again in the next 13 years before he moves out of the house.

Fat chance.