BOOM!

That’s what we heard here yesterday morning at five o’clock. Just one really loud and big, BOOM! That’ll wake you out of a sound sleep and fast. Mr. Pop and I jumped up like we had been popped out of a toaster. In unison we said, “WTF was that?”

Seems a transformer had blown up down the street and all the electric on our block was out. I grabbed the flashlight and found my cell phone. In a haze of just waking up, I called and reported the outage to a recording at the electric company. The recording said I could expect the electric to be back on by nine in the morning. Bummer!

No coffee, no TV news, no computer, no nothing but darkness. Because Mr. Pop was about to leave on a weeklong business trip, I was already in a mild state of anxiety. Now sitting in the dark, that state of anxiety went from mild to a full blown anxiety attack. I hate it when that happens. I get all nervous, find breathing difficult and I can’t sit still.

I turned on one of the battery powered lamps we have for hurricane season and tried to read the newspaper. I had plenty of light but no way in hell could I concentrate on what I was reading. By the way, an ice cold Coke isn’t the same as a hot cup of coffee at five in the morning.

Mr. Pop got ready for his trip and took off about six thirty. I know he felt bad leaving me for a whole week to do all the household chores and now he was also leaving me in the dark.

After he left I went out on the patio and sat and watched the sun come up. Just, Fred the Cat, some early birds at the feeder and me. I realized that was the first time in a very long time that Fred the Cat and I had shared a sunrise together with only the sounds of his purring and the birds chattering in the background.

Sometime before the electric came back on at seven thirty, I realized something. My anxiety had faded away with the rising sun and the serenity of a quiet morning, a morning that began with a BOOM!