Having gorged myself on so much alone-time I was starting to go a little crazy, I decided to call my very favorite TTHM, and he wasn’t home. This of course, made me incredibly bratty and cranky, because I was really starting to bore myself to no end. So instead of having a temper tantrum and drowning myself in some sort of weird Sunday black funkness, I decided to bust out the Johnson” Bed Time’ Bath and see if I couldn’t shower my funkies away. I really needed the shower too, you know for hygienic reasons because I actually (gasp!) exercised today (the first time I’ve gotten all sweaty without the aid of a vibrator in a long, long time).

Anyway I was in the shower humming a little song, doing a little dance when the lights began to flicker. The weather had been quite armpitty all day, and I noticed around 6 o’clock that the dark clouds rolled in awfully fast. . . so I knew a storm was a brewing.

Then the lights went out.

With conditioner in my hair, and toothbrush in my mouth I decided to swear a bit and finish up my shower. The shower is the last place you want to be when the lights go out. because when you get out all naked and dripping wet, there is no light to guide you to find your glasses and without your glasses and light you know there’s no way in hell you’re ever gonna be able to find a lighter to light the candles.

So I exit the shower and stand naked and dripping and deciding if I should cry or not. because, you know thunderstorms scare the bejesus out of me and it was thundering like all god’s children had gone bowling [sorry Shannon Olson, it’s just a really good title]. Shivering I decided the first plan of attack would be to find the glasses. these would help me in my lighter-searching/clothes gathering adventure. . . even if it was too dark to see, I’d feel a little better with my glasses on. Getting the glasses meant that I had to traverse the hallway and enter the lair of the unknown floor hazards (a.k.a. my bedroom).

In the bright light of electricity, the walk from bathroom to bedroom usually takes roughly three seconds, or two steps (I have long legs and a small apartment). But now, with the lights off the three feet separating the two rooms is fraught with danger, mostly because I’m a bad, bad housekeeper. I know that dish rack I bought at Target three weeks ago is lurking about on the floor, along with roughly seven issues of the New Yorker. They were just waiting there to trip me up. See, I’ve had a history with falling. I am here to say that the adage the bigger they are the harder they fall is true. So you can understand my trepidation.

But, I am a brave warrior, and after roughly seventeen teeny tiny baby steps and six minutes I make it the bedroom, having only stepped on the New Yorkers and through some grace of god, avoiding the treacherous dish rack. Once in the bedroom, thanks to the clothes strewn about the floor I can carefully navigate my way to the bed. I plop down on the bed and begin to blindly pat the neighboring nightstand. Everything I touched was covered with dust and that sort of grossed me out, but after a few minutes I discovered my glasses and quickly put them on my face. Ahh, victory will soon be mine!

With a bespectacled, albeit still wet face, I decide to gather all my courage and head to the kitchen. If you thought the hallway was bad, you ain’t met my kitchen. I knew in my deepest heart of hearts there was a lighter to be found in the junk drawer just to the left of the silverware drawer and if I could get to the lighter then soon after lighted candles would guide my way to finding some clothes (I did take a 45 second bitch break to scold myself for actually putting the clothes away when I did laundry last, this is a rare occurrence). Still naked and mostly wet, I ventured for the kitchen. The journey was marred by a smacking of the forehead against that stupid shelf in the entryway and painful kicking of a steel-toed doc marten, but I made it there. Soon the lighter was mine! It was in the junk drawer right where I had put it and the candle on my desk was only an arm-stretch away.

I did it! I made light. I happily pranced around the apartment, the lit candle guiding my way, lighting all the other candles placed strategically about the place. No longer was I worried about the nakedness and the wetness. That was until I heard the voices outside and realized that hmm, the blinds were still open.

But alls well that ends well, right? I spent the evening, clothed my heart racing with each thunderclap and reading a book my candlelight. It was actually pretty peaceful.