Priorities

I have decided that there’s a disturbance in The Force lately. Well, at least the force surrounding me. Electricity is going haywire. Today, after several days of electronic miscues and coughing starts, my car battery died. A few days ago my hair dryer sputtered, spit out one last heroic spark and gave up the ghost. The automatic sprinklers tripped off. The hot water recirculation pump timer went bonkers. It all started a couple of weeks ago on a Thursday afternoon.

I was doing a little laundry. The sheets were in the dryer and the towels were in the washer. I decided I needed a little snooze, so I stretched out on the loveseat in the family room and fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later around 4:00 pm, I headed to the laundry room. But first I stopped at the bathroom– the hall bathroom with no windows. I flipped the light switch and nothing happened. Damn, the light must be burned out, I thought. I left the door open and tended to my business, wondering if I had any of those spotlight bulbs that go in the recessed light fixture, trying to remember where the extender was so I could reach the bulb to change it. Annoying, I thought in my fuzzy just-woke-up-from-a-nap state. Prioritizing, I decided to deal with it after tending to the laundry.

In the laundry room, I took the dry sheets out of the dryer, put the wet towels in, shut the door and pushed the Power button. Nothing. I pushed it again. Nothing. I checked the dryer door to make sure it was latched. Yep. I pushed the Power button again. Nothing. That’s when it dawned on me that the power was out. Crap.

It’s funny what you think about when the power’s out. You’d think you would bemoan the lack of telephone or computer or TV or microwave. Apparently, my priorities are different. The first thing I thought of was the brand new package of ice cream bars in the freezer. I figured I’d better go have an ice cream bar before they all melted, because who knew how long the power would be out. I sat there eating my ice cream wondering if it was just my house or the whole block. After I’m done with the ice cream I’ll figure it out, I thought. First things first.

That’s when Gary came home and said the power was out at his studio, too. The electric company website was down. The City website was down. Clearly, this was more far-reaching than our little neighborhood. Gary found our hand cranked emergency radio in a kitchen drawer and started cranking. We couldn’t get any news, though, because President Obama was delivering his jobs speech early so as not to interfere with the NFL season opener. The country has its priorities, too. For me it’s ice cream; for the country it’s football. We listened to the president and occasionally cranked the radio until Gary realized it was also solar powered. He set it on the kitchen floor in a shaft of sunlight and magically the president kept on talking. I felt like I had been transported to the days before television, when whole families sat around the radio for their evening’s entertainment or for fireside chats with the president.

As the sunlight waned the radio did too, and we were back to cranking if we wanted an update on the power situation. Human error, the radio said. One maintenance guy in Arizona had made a mistake and unplugged millions in Southern California. We could be in for a long powerless vigil. I got out the candles and the flashlights and discovered most of the super duper flashlights I’d bought a few years ago had oozing batteries, and I didn’t have the right size replacements. Preparing for an emergency had obviously slipped from the top of my priority list.

I made sandwiches for dinner before the light dimmed too much to see what I was putting in them. After we’d eaten and I’d cleaned up the kitchen, I took a book out to the back yard and sat there reading. I couldn’t think of a better thing to do.

As I sat there, I realized how quiet it was. Without the power for all of the devices that populate our busy lives, the world was gloriously silent. I hadn’t realized how loud the underlying hum of modern life was until it wasn’t there anymore. Even after the sun went down and the moon began to rise, I sat and listened. That’s all I had to do. No decisions were necessary. No prioritizing begged to be done. It was so peaceful. I vowed to make it a priority just to be quiet and listen to the silence more often.

But as soon as the power snapped back on a little after 8:00 pm, the vow was forgotten. I slipped easily back onto the grid. I snuffed out the candles, reset the clocks, rewashed and dried the towels, checked email and caught the end of the football game and a couple of other shows before I went to bed, as if nothing unusual had ever happened.

Maybe that’s what The Force is disturbed about. Maybe all these glitches are meant as reminders to slow down and appreciate the world around me, pay more attention to my priorities. Just don't mess with my ice cream.