Are you afraid of THE DARK?

Last night Ryan and I had a usual romantic Saturday night. It started with a 5pm early bird dinner with the extended family, followed by a rockin' graduation party for one of the kids of a family from church, and ended with a moonlight trip to Walmart. It was one of those date nights that young girls just dream about. One our way home from Walmart we had commented how hot it was. Not our date- the weather outside. It was probably close to 100 degrees even though it was after 9pm. Plus the wind was blowing a breeze that felt like a space heater turned up a million percent. There were a few light raindrops in the air but nothing that actually resembled a storm. We turned down the street to our apartment and noticed that there weren't any street lights on. We joked about how it looked like the scene from a summer murder mystery. And then we turned into our apartment and realized that every single apartment had its lights off. Like everybody was gone. Or like THE POWER WAS OUT. We noticed a couple sitting outside so we rolled down the window and asked how long the power had been out. They said for about an hour. That is not what you want to hear when you're coming home on a hot night with a backseat full of groceries. We unloaded our stuff quickly and organized everything so that we would only have to open the freezer and refrigerator one time to conserve the coolness inside.

At that point you normally start to think that the power will flicker on shortly. So we waited. And waited. And talked about how there really isn't much to do when there's no power. And waited some more. This made me start to think about life in the "old days." Back before the light bulb and electricity. It must have been so different. Like if you lived out on the prairie and it got dark, you probably went to bed earlier. And how before electricity and TVs and computers, you would be freed up to have much more time spent in conversation. Or maybe time spent milking your cow or sewing your own underwear. Whatever. I kind of wish that we could have more days like that. To enjoy how truly quiet it gets at night without the humming of everything that uses electricity. To enjoy a simple evening. To just sit and talk and not be distracted. Except for one thing.....

Air conditioning. I'm sure the kings and queens in castles had a fun time dancing by candlelight, but I'm also betting they got really hot sometimes. With sweltering temperatures outside and a hot wind that could melt butter, our little apartment got very warm, very quickly. I kept thinking, okay, we just need to turn a fan on. But it turns out you need electricity to do that too!

Our "hot date" night ended with us deciding that we would try to sleep despite the heat. We kept putting cool washcloths on our heads (and my poor pregnant feet!) to stay comfortable. After about 3 hours of this, the electricity came back on. I laid in bed and thanked God for cool air as I finally drifted to sleep.