One day last week I came home to find the lights not working. As I looked around the house I realized the clock on the stove wasn't working either. In fact, we had no power. The house was quiet, dead, very lonely. My mind was racing as I thought, "Did I forget to pay the electric bill? What kind of person forgets to pay the electric bill-have I stooped that low? If I didn't pay it, wouldn't they send me a notice prior to shutting it off? Maybe I forgot to read the incoming mail too!! Oh, no!! Wait a minute - I use billpay on the internet, I know it got paid! But wait- I haven't paid the rent yet. Oh, what date is it? Holy Cow that's like 2 weeks late!! Would the landlord be able to have our electricity turned off until we pay our rent? But she didn't even call me!" Then I remembered I passed a firetruck on the way home and there was a huge electric line down. Whew!! We're okay-everyone is out of power in this area.
After realizing I couldn't do laundry, watch the news, or even check my email, I decided I'd better get the flashlights out before the sun went down. We took our luke warm crock pot dinner over to Dads and ate with them. Then we came home and played shadow puppets for a few minutes before reading together by flashlight for about an hour and were all in bed by 8:30. So the next time you feel like life is moving too fast, I suggest you flip the breaker and live like pioneers for a few hours. It's very therapeutic.