The Brown/Black Out

On Friday night we had Rob’s birthday party because he was home so late on the actual date that the kids were already in bed. I was in the middle of making enchiladas for dinner when the TV went black, but the power light was still on. Huh, that’s weird. Then we turned on some lights and they were only half power. Oh, this is a brown out. I had heard on the news that this might happen because of the extremely hot weather. I wondered how long it would last. Maybe an hour, and then they would turn some other neighborhood down for a while. So I finished cooking my enchiladas in a frying pan since the “oven” was out of commission. Rob came home and the kids had pulled candles from around the house for a candle lit birthday dinner. We had a great time and opened some presents and ate cake and ice cream. After putting the kids to bed, the brown out was still on. They were getting restless as the temperature crept up to 85. I gave them each a wet washcloth to keep next to their beds so they could wipe themselves off once in a while to cool down. If we had enough energy to run fans things would be fine, but it was getting hotter and stickier. Rob called the phone company and they said it would be back on the next morning because a transformer had to be replaced. So we slept with all of the windows open and did ok.

Saturday morning we woke up with no electricity at all. Hunter had a basketball game and then he and Emma had a swimming lesson. I took Hunter to his game and Rob went to the YMCA to hang out with the girls where it was air conditioned. After swimming lessons we went out for lunch because it was now 112 degrees and we couldn’t bear the thought of going home yet. Once we did get home we discovered that the power had just come back on. Rob was trying to get the air conditioner running again when we heard a loud pop about a block away. Oh no, and then the brown out came back. The house was stifling now with the combination of high heat and high humidity. We went to the back yard and stayed in the pool for the rest of the day. Our neighbors also came over and sat in the pool with us and then we decided to go to dinner together at IHOP. It was so nice to be in air conditioning! We had a great break from the heat and then headed home to face the heat. It was 98 degrees when we walked in at 8:30 pm. We debated sticking it out at home or going and raiding someone else’s house. The hot house won.