It was a Doozy!!!

The last 24 hours were quite the adventure for me! I have had a few fairly large projects that I have been working on for work and play. Of course it is Murphy's law that they would all cluster into the same time frame, isn't it? So I was "mostly" done with everything, and not actually done with anything, and they all had deadlines of today! I had chunked out a large section of time last night to finish a large project that needed shipped, and a few hours on the computer would get the banner ad done for Kim's big release tomorrow! I was even confident that I would be able to stamp for a few hours with those new Kim stamps, and therein lies my mistake. Interestingly enough, I needed electricity to be most effective and efficient in those goals. Safe to assume that would be available to me without a concern? Shouldn't have made that assumption.

At about 6:30 pm, right in the middle of dinner, the electricity went out. It was kind of fun to eat by candlelight as we huddled waiting for the lights, tv, and heater to pop back on. Didn't happen. The kids roasted mini-marshmallows on toothpicks over those same dinner candles for dessert ;o) they were quite cute, I of course had to snap some pics of that and even roast a few myself, no worries on time, the power would be back soon and the moment would be gone. Didn't happen.

These types of outages happen enough to not create worry or frustration at this point, but would the kind people who fix these little glitches please hurry along as I had things that were waiting for a little power! Well one hour turned into two, and then four and well, there was only so much that I could do with my limited resources to get my goals accomplished. So out came Tyler's hiking headlamp, the dinner candles stayed on duty and out came a couple of flashlights. One was suspended from the lamp overhead that had been rendered useless, and the other scotch taped onto a large pot with a kitchen towel wedged underneath to provide a usable angle of light. Don't you love the look on my tired face as Dave took this picture at about 12:30 this morning. The power was still not on, and the house was quite a crisp temperature. I was bound and determined that this project would make it the shipping deadline I had set for myself. So what you don't see in this picture are the 15 odd shaped snowflakes that I had glittered just a few minutes previously. After I was done with that step, I set the non-stick sheet aside and it was a little to close to one of the candles, luckily Tyler saw it smoking before it went into actual flames. I had glitter everywhere, on a more personal note, I went into the dark bathroom for a few private moments and even found glitter in there that I could see in the dark, ack! Woke up this morning to find it in my hair as I pulled it back into the ponytail that I typically wear for tennis. The lesson I wish to share from that is don't glitter in the dark my friends!

So by 1:45 am, I had done the best I could and called it good. The house was cold and dark, so I even wore my sweatshirt and shearling boots into bed. It took a while to get warm enough to relax and drift off to sleep, and wouldn't you know, as soon as we had made it into a reasonable restful state, the lights came on, the heater cranked up and the tv popped into life. 3:00 am. Yup, back to awake in the cold to get up and turn it all back off again.

Don't take your electricity for granted, keep flashlights handy, and be very careful when crafting by candlelight.

B-