Last night, just as we sat down to watch Season 3, Episode 1 of How to Get Away with Murder, the power went out. Moments later, it came back on. We settled in again to watch the series. But the power went out again. The second time, it stayed out; from 7:40 p.m. until roughly 10:20 p.m. When I reported the outage, Entergy claimed there was no known outage in my area. A moment later, though, the story changed. The outage affected 188 households and should be back on by 11. A moment or two later, the story changed again. The outage was a “planned outage” to upgrade Entergy facilities. Sometime later, the cause was a “scheduled interruption.” Whether planned or scheduled, Entergy did not bother to notify customers, which rankled me a tad. My mood all day had been borderline bitter; Entergy helped push it to sharp, sour, rancid, fetid, caustic, acrid, and deeply biting and unpleasant.
Night fell. We sat in the darkness; she played games on her phone, I fumed and paced, inside and out. Finally, around 9:00 a.m., we went to bed; no fan, but I opened some windows in the hope of a little breeze. Around 11, I awoke to lights in the living room. I could feel the air beginning to chill. The expectations one has, living in a first-world country in the twenty-first century, again were met. Just over three hours without electricity and I was complaining bitterly about paying my electric bill, but still only living in a third-world country. Shame, embarrassment, and assorted other unpleasant emotions tied to low self-esteem flowed from my brain; they continue to flow, as they should. What a spoiled brat. I was alone in my earned embarrassment; my IC took it all in with stoic resolve.
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Day before yesterday, I posted—here on this blog—photos of my canopy bed and my dining table. Good friends noticed and decided they wanted the bed. And they shall have it! Not only that, through a family connection, my IC’s big desk will disappear, as well. I love it when things work out that way; we wanted the beautiful pieces out of our way (though I will, in many ways, miss that glorious old bed) and they wanted that grandeur in their home…as if it were meant to be! Life can be good, even while being dragged beneath the surface by waves of ennui.
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I had a very long eye-care appointment yesterday. I arrived on time, just before 1:45 p.m. I walked out into the blinding sunlight (eyes dilated so my pupils were the size of pancakes) just after 4:00 p.m. Yes, I need new prescription glasses. I knew that going in. I do not know how much of an improvement I will get, but the technician who calculated the prescription strength mentioned 20/15 vision more than once. She also said she would increase my reading prescription from +2.50 to +2.75; the doctor, though, backtracked and left it at +2.50. I tend to trust the technician a little more than I trust the doctor. I may buy a pair of +2.75 reading glasses just to see what they might be like. Before I buy new lenses. And new frames. The optician (after the eye exam) said they do not carry magnetic clip-on sunglasses frames, but she said I could find them at Walmart. I may look. Or I may wait and look at Costco, where I bought my last magnetic clip-on sunglasses about 9 or 10 years ago. Time will tell. It always does.
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From my little black book of Zen-influenced quotations:
Truth is within ourselves; it takes no rise
From outward things, what’er you may believe.
There is an inmost centre in us all,
Where truth abides in fullness.~ Robert Browning ~
I am not quite sure I understand, much less embrace, those words, but I find them comforting, nonetheless.
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I had a series of odd dreams last night, In one of them, I was in the passenger seat of a car being driven by a friend from church. At some point, she said something to the effect of “I noticed you flinch when I brushed your leg in the pew. Don’t worry, it’s just my way.” Then, she started laughing uncontrollably as she reached over with a whisk broom and brushed my leg with it. In another dream (or maybe the same one), I had a rope tied around my waist as protection against falling; I tried to lean from a ladder to knock down a hornet’s next. Suddenly, I fell off the ladder and dangled, swinging back and forth, from the rope. I was petrified with fear, but whoever was with me laughed hysterically at my plight. I was as frightened of the hornets that I heard buzzing around my head as I was of falling to the ground, far, far below. Dreams are bizarre in so many ways.
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So far, today is modestly better than yesterday. I suppose it’s just the stress of major changes in my surroundings; it will be fine. But I can hear my heart beat louder than ever this morning. It’s like a slow-paced bongo; that’s the kind of noise I hear as the blood is pumped through the vessels in and around my ears. It’s the sort of sound that could, if it continued unabated for hours, drive me stark-raving mad; loony enough to take a machete to scarecrows protecting farmers’ crops of pumpkins. And the farmer, a firm proponent of taking Second Amendment rights well beyond their intended limits, would riddle me with bullets from an AR-15. So, maybe today is not really THAT much better than yesterday. Any day in which one’s imagination includes feeling the pain and seeing the blood pouring from wounds caused by a hail of gunfire is not an especially hunky-dory day.
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More coffee, thence to Walmart to pick up yesterday’s online order of groceries.
