I ran out of soda today.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
That’s not what disqualifies me — it’s just the starting point of the most recent crisis.\u00a0 A crisis that most of you would be able to handle in a calm and rational manner, and really would be more of a minor annoyance.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As I said, this story begins in the way many of my stories begin: I woke up nearly out of soda.\u00a0 That meant I had to find a way to get more.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Fortunately, a way existed, and it was all set up.\u00a0 In fact, our roommate was on his way home when I went upstairs to find appropriate out-in-the-world clothes.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
To find clothes, I needed to turn on the lights in the bedroom.<\/p>\n
That’s when it happened.<\/p>\n
The lights flickered.\u00a0 Bright, dim, dimmer, half-bright.\u00a0 All while a noise came from the switch.\u00a0 A crackly sort of noise.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
A bad noise.<\/p>\n
A noise I’d learned to fear in a situation that proved I’m terrible at handling a crisis anywhere.<\/p>\n
Pretend I’m waving my hands here to indicate a flashback.\u00a0 Also, that ‘flashback’ got all fade-away-echoey.<\/p>\n
So there I was, half awake, having not slept all that well away from home.\u00a0 We were at a friend’s house, and that friend and Gremlin had gone off to a breakfast buffet.\u00a0 I was not hungry, as I’d just woken up, and eating is not my favourite activity in the first five hours of awakeness.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
I was outside, having a cigarette, when I heard a strange noise.\u00a0 A noise that some low-level, instinctive part of me identified as very bad indeed<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n So I looked around, kinda wondering what it could be.\u00a0 Something big in a tree?\u00a0 A plastic bag caught on the fence in weirdly regional high wind?\u00a0 Huh, there’s a big, flickery, yellow-red thing on that tree up there. Perhaps someone was practicing with their Tesla Coil.\u00a0 Industrial popcorn popper?<\/p>\n Wait…flickery…where was that.<\/p>\n A fucking tree was on fire.\u00a0 And the power line that ran through it was sparking.\u00a0 And quirky, rational me?\u00a0 Ran right out of my sphincter and bounded away like an innocent young unicorn.\u00a0 <\/p>\n All that was left was puddle-of-anxiety me.\u00a0 The me that needed help to figure out what to do, because I didn’t even know where the fuck I was<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/p>\n So I called the friend who lived there, because he was first in my phone’s list.\u00a0 <\/p>\n He told me to call 911.\u00a0 He also told me the address, but it didn’t stick.\u00a0 And I didn’t think to look around for mail, so I ended up trotting down the street, barefoot and in sleep pants, neighbours-a-watchin’, all because they needed a street name to go with the number.\u00a0 And then they needed to transfer me to the appropriate 911 office, because, oops, my phone was locked in to the wrong one.<\/p>\n Everything ended up okay.\u00a0 The fire was out before the firemen even got there, and they couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.\u00a0 I felt retarded, and everyone got a funny story about how I didn’t know what to do.<\/p>\n End Flashback.<\/p>\n So I froze in the bedroom, with the light switched firmly off.\u00a0 And I was afraid to touch it, because ‘electrical sounds’ means ‘electricity’.\u00a0 That means electrocution.\u00a0 <\/p>\n I ran out and told Gremlin.\u00a0 <\/p>\n He came in, switched it on and off a few times, and said it’d be okay while we went to get soda.<\/p>\n I was not convinced.\u00a0 I couldn’t be convinced of anything a this point.\u00a0 <\/p>\n I needed to take a whole dose of lorazepam.<\/p>\n Because we were still out of soda.\u00a0 Soda was needed.\u00a0 Troubleshooting could come later.\u00a0 But I also needed pants, which lived in the bedroom, which was now the home of\u00a0 an angry electricity-beast, and a potential fire-beast. <\/p>\n I did not want to go.\u00a0 But I\u00a0 had to anyway.\u00a0 <\/p>\n I rushed through everything, terrified that I’d come home to a crater and a dead cat.\u00a0 And it was the ‘dead cat’ part that hurt most.<\/p>\n The house was still there when we got back.\u00a0 And, in a haze of panic and lorazepam, I played a game of Cards Against Humanity online with a few people.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Then, I got right back to panic.\u00a0 Which led to dumping on a few people, and some suggestions [they were all pretty helpful, but, honestly, telling me it’s going to be okay?\u00a0 Not exactly the biggest help.\u00a0 A rational part of my brain probably knows this, but panic isn’t rational, and there’s not much I can do except remove the source of the panic].<\/p>\n Remove the source of the panic.\u00a0 Well, that means, what, finding out what was going on?\u00a0 So I remove the plate and flick the switch to see if there are sparks.\u00a0 <\/p>\n None that I could see.\u00a0 Good or bad?\u00a0 Probably good.\u00a0 Might mean it’s the switch.\u00a0 Maybe.\u00a0 But…no, I do not feel safe yet.<\/p>\n That meant a trip to the back yard.<\/p>\n So I hired a native guide, put on my adventuring hat, and went out to the big metal box full of mystery switches, and played a game of ‘talk on the phone while trying to keep the flashlight app running’.\u00a0 <\/p>\n And I found it.\u00a0 <\/p>\n That’s the good news.\u00a0 The power to that room should very much be off.\u00a0 At the very least, the power to that switch seems to be off.\u00a0 I won’t know for sure until I test it properly.\u00a0 <\/p>\n Bad news, or possibly ‘terrible person to live with news’ — that breaker also controlled the lights to both bathrooms.\u00a0 <\/p>\n So we’ll all be bathroomin’ in the dark until I get it fixed.\u00a0 <\/p>\n As long as it’s just the switch, and not Electricity Gnomes, or wall dragons [they like to chew on electrical wiring — it’s like their catnip].<\/p>\n For now, I’m just going to, well, finish up this post, because here we are, roughly at realtime. I’m on the sofa, with the fan from the bedroom set up down here, so I can try to sleep in a place that isn’t, well, dead-but-most-certainly-plotting. <\/p>\n It’s going to be a long night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I ran out of soda today.\u00a0 That’s not what disqualifies me — it’s just the starting point of the most recent crisis.\u00a0 A crisis that most of you would be able to handle in a calm and rational manner, and … Continue reading