Our town has experienced a fair number of power outages of late, often as a result of large vehicles smashing into power poles out on the highway. This afternoon's outage was caused by the dropping of some powerlines that were in the process of being re-situated.
We were at the local mall when the power went out. We checked the other 2 grocery stores closer to home first but had little success in finding what we wanted today, so ended up at the most miserable, filthy, poorly stocked grocery store there is here. After some more frustration we did have to congratulate the store on actually having all of the products we couldn't get elsewhere, even if some of them were not easy to locate. At least they were available, yay!!
We just reached the line up for the cashier when suddenly the entire mall went into blackout mode. After the first plunge into the darkness a handful of emergency lights came on. The tills were still working but that would be a temporary situation until the back up power went down. In the interest of safety and shoplifting prevention we were told rather unceremoniously by the manager to "get out of the store NOW." From my own previous experience in dealing with the general public in retail situations I can understand her immediate retreat into defensive mode and my husband and I stashed our baskets and cartons on a high shelf, then got the heck out of there into the main mall area. Lots of people had key ring flashlights, myself included, some had larger flashlights, there were cell phone lights flashing about and it was easy enough to exit the mall. Most of us who had been in the grocery store opted to just stand outside the now locked doors and wait to see if the power loss was a temporary glitch. After nearly a half hour of standing about my husband said there was little chance it would come on again any time soon, so we drove home. The entire town was in darkness.
Just as we were arriving home I checked the time and realized my quickly developing crabbiness was a result of being late getting my dinner, not just from having to leave my basket of difficult to find grocery items abandoned in the store. I strapped on my husband's mountain climbing headlamp that was still sitting in my bedroom after the last power outage and made myself a sandwich, sliced up some cucumber and located some stale prunes. Not quite the home made (thank you sweetie for your great Indian cooking) feast I had been expecting, but still it did the trick in bringing up my blood sugar and making me feel happy again. About the time I finished eating the power returned. We waited for 15 minutes to make sure it was likely to stay on and my husband raced back to the grocery store to see if our baskets and cartons were still where he left them earlier. They were there, the store had just opened again and he was able to purchase our "prizes" with no difficulty. Whew!
The idea of having to return there tomorrow and relocate all those items after they had been returned to the shelves was not appealing. I would have had to cram the trip in between my 6 month blood work at the hospital early in the morning and my husband's need of the car to get to our other town to work for the day. So grateful for his willingness to return to the store tonight instead, thereby making him late for his own dinner. At least when he finally got home he was able to eat some of the Indian food he'd made earlier on. It smelled fantastic and I couldn't resist taking a small bite.
Hopefully that will be the end of the power problems for awhile now. We missed some important phone messages because we had forgotten to plug in the land line this morning and of course the cordless needs electrical power to run. I am getting pretty good though at making "headlamp" sandwiches!! There is always a "silver lining", right?
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