a river of stones #27

I spent the whole day without electricity because I forgot to mark on my computer calendar a planned ten-hour maintenance outage in my neighborhood that was to start at seven in the morning. Totally unprepared with a full days work ahead of me, I was left with a half-charged cell phone and a set of car keys to get through the busy day. The partial to-do list I made the night before was as follows; pay bills, wash all sheets, work on taxes, clean master closets, catch up on emails, catch up on writing deadlines, send e-cards out for Mom...all to do with using electricity.

I didn't realize how dark the inside of closets were or how many times a day I actually turned on a light, or, how dependent I was on the coffee maker. It was frustrating at first but I opted to turn the phone off, hang the car keys up on the hook, and see if I could manage a productive day without any modern day conveniences...save the porcelain goddess. I was lucky that the weather was unseasonably warm.

By the end of the day I found that I rather enjoyed the surprising change in my schedule and wrote down a revised list of to-dos; garden, read, sit on the swing and write with pen and paper, garden some more, watch a spider work its web, take pictures of the spider working its web, learn how to make a pot of coffee on the bar-b-que, start enjoying the outdoors like I used to.

I learned a few things things that surprised me and thought a lot about how frustrating it must have been for all those who have gone before me.

electricity
wondering what in the world
they did without it

1/27/2011 Stevie