Why do I struggle to sleep during a power outage? The house is quiet, eerily quiet, with a thick curtain of darkness blocking out the world, but my mind stays alert, aware that something is wrong:
What time is it now? The juice is supposed to return around midnight. Sure feels like midnight, but how would I know?
Thirsty. Where's that flashlight? Oops, can't run the water with the pump dead, and can't open the fridge lest the outage last longer than expected. Wait, here's a can of ginger ale on the counter. Would warm ginger ale help me sleep? What if it makes me want to pee? Can't flush the toilets with no power to the well pump.
Why can't I sleep?
Next day I kept asking people at church what they thought of the storm and they all said "What storm?" Apparently it was highly localized, bringing sudden hail, rain, wind, and thunder to our small corner of the county while skirting the rest. By next morning crews had removed fallen trees and limbs from several areas of our road, but I saw little sign of damage elsewhere.
The storm lasted ten minutes at most but left us in the dark for six hours, much of which I spent wondering why I couldn't sleep. And then the power came on and we suddenly became aware of just how many little lights surround us every day, how many common noises provide the soundtrack of our lives. The clock came on, the fan started moving air around, and I soon settled into blissful sleep.
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