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Newsworthy News

We were hit with a blustery, gusty storm. It blew all day then started to snow while I was driving home from work at 7:30 at night.  I opened the garage door and drove the van in.  The power went out as the garage door was midway closing.  This was a definite improvement from a couple of weeks ago when the power flicker occurred when I was on the other side of the garage and without a remote. 

The first hour was fun.  We lit candles and hunted down flashlights, replacing batteries where needed.  The second hour was cozy.  There was no noise from the television, computer, refrigerator, dryer, washing machine or any appliance.  The beginning of the third hour was boring.  Everybody wandered off to sleep.  Being neurotic, I felt it was my duty to stand sentry until the power came on.  When would the power come on?  I considered calling... who?  First off, the cordless phones don't work.  We have cells but all city offices are closed.  I'd check the news.  But how?  No T.V., no internet.  Transistor radio vaguely ran through my brain and I wondered if I could scare one up.

Disturbing my husband, I unplugged his clock to fiddle with the battery.  Turns out, the battery is only back-up for remembering the time but not for tuning into the radio.  I then started my quest for the crank radio/flashlight.  The flashlight never really worked and after looking in all the logical places with a low functioning flashlight, I turned up nothing.  Walkman?  No idea where I could find it if I still owned it.  I finally remembered that my old telephone had a radio if I plugged in earphones.  I dug it out of the growing "dead phone" pile.  This one hadn't gone through the wash.  All I had to do was plug it in and charge it.  Oh, yeah.  No power.  But I have charger in the van.  I could turn the van on and charge it and in the meantime I could just flip on the radio and find out what's going on. 

Seriously, people.  I am too slow witted to be the mother in this house. 

I made myself as comfortable as I could (I did have the mental capacity to disconnect the garage door from the chain and motor, closing the garage), I waited anxiously to the news station.  25 minutes later the news came on.  "Big storm front sweeping through Utah.  Power outages reported in at least 6 cities."  Ummmm.  Really? 

Why is it that when I want information about something, there is nothing and when there is nothing to make news, news programs make it up?  Okay, they don't really make up the whole thing but when they know nothing, a reporter shows up close to the scene of the event, give the skeleton details over and over again and then spend the next 20 minutes talking to strangers with no connection whatsoever to the event and who have absolutely nothing new to add but poor grammar and non-existent dental hygiene?  Sometimes they offer vague details like, "I heard a boom."  Most of the time they offer intelligent opinions like, "It's just so sad."  What they ought to be really worried about is the proximity of the camera.  It's always an extreme close-up and there is no way I'd want my face to fill the screen of a 48 inch plasma.

I was on the news once.  I didn't know I was being filmed.  I was talking to a congressman.  It sounds so important when I say it.  It was my 4 seconds of fame without sound.  When I watched the clip on the news that night, I saw the congressman talking to a Beluga whale wearing my dress.  Given, I was 7 months pregnant but I vowed my image would never be transmitted into anybody's living room again.

So good news for all the non-news-extreme-close-up fillers tonight.  20,000 homes did not have power.  You still have some of your dignity intact.

This, coming from the Beluga.

Comments

  1. I still had power last night, but you make me laugh.
    "I am too slow witted to be the mother in this house." I'm in trouble. Serious trouble if wit is required of being the mother. I got nothing.

    In other news. . . it sounded like my house was going to blow off the foundation last night. THAT was some serious wind!

    ReplyDelete

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