Dinner by candlelight-- but hold the candles

The girls and I got home from a huge grocery store run just in time to slam together a rather late, patched together dinner and enjoy it with Ian. It had been raining off and on all afternoon, and we were glad not to have been caught out in the worst of it.

Then around 6:00 p.m., just as I dished bowls of too-processed-to-admit-on-this-blog out to the clan, the power went out. There was enough natural light to see our food, fortunately, but we were afraid to open our refrigerator to get out the cream so I could whip it to put over berries and cake, so that had to wait. Last time power went out in our area, it took until around 5:00 a.m. to regain it.

The rain stopped. We finished our dinner, pulled on our rain boots, and stomped joyously in all the water that had pooled on our street corner. We put the girls to bed. We moved all the stuff we cared most about into the freezer downstairs. We sat around in a blackout and chatted, debating between the relative merits of better air circulation outside against a high mosquito count.

Finally, around midnight, the power returned. At long last Ian and I righted everything and finally went to bed. Now, for my next trick, cleaning out the refrigerator.