This morning I got up just after 6 to let the pups out, and was surprised to see it was still dark outside. When I stepped off the deck, the wind started gusting, lightning flashing, and thunder rolling. Chupi could not have timed his need to pee any better – as soon as he got done, the sky unleashed. I’ve never seen rain come down that hard. It was like a silver curtain, I couldn’t even see the trees anymore!

And because the universe enjoys messing with me, I had literally just started to think “wow this is AWESOME!” when the power went out.

This was a Bad Thing for two reasons – 1) I was up that early specifically intending to crank out a bunch of writing for work that was due, and 2) losing power makes me fussy. *Very* fussy. Despite having survived (some might say flourished) during the Dark Days when the grid was down for 4 days, I seem to have some residual PTSD.

I lasted a full ten minutes before waking up Gene to inform him that the power was out. When he realized that I was fully committed to hounding him relentlessly until he did something about it, he got up and dragged out the little generator we bought used a few months back. We ran an extension from the driveway to the office, and lo and behold – I had access to the Internet. (And delicious coffee, because Gene told me I could only run two things at once. It was a no brainer.)

The downside to having internet access? I was glued to the power co-ops “real-time” outage map, where I was able to update Gene every 5 minutes on exactly how much progress the work crews weren’t making. He also threatened to hide the car keys after I mentioned how great it is that they show where the crews are actively working – I thought going to find out firsthand exactly what the hold up is was a great idea! On the plus side, after 8 hours of unmitigated whining (his words, not mine), he called the whole-house generator place to get a quote. Everybody wins!

While the power outage lasted most of the day, thankfully the rain didn’t – there’s only so long I can sit and type before the urge to go outside becomes overwhelming. The geese were playing in a puddle, so I was able to swipe Ceri’s Jolly ball and play fetch with her for awhile.

The geese have adopted it, and claimed it as theirs. They nap cuddled up around it, stand guard over it, and I’m pretty sure whisper sweet nothings to it. I have no idea why they’re so drawn to it, but they get visibly upset when I throw it for Ceri. And it’s just the blue one – they couldn’t care less about the orange one.

I’m also happy to report that the monarch eggs and caterpillars I’ve been watching over stayed nice and dry, thanks to the Monarch Sanctuary Gene made! While it’s a bit smaller than my vision dictated – I can’t walk into it and recline on a bench whilst watching my babies munch on leaves – it definitely gets the job done.

Even though I had a few milkweed plants growing on the back deck, the monarchs haven’t figured it out yet so I had to stock the sanctuary with eggs and caterpillars from my friend Jennifer’s house. We spent a happy 30 minutes carefully prowling through her milkweed patch, and I brought home 8 caterpillars of varying sizes and plenty of eggs. Should be just a couple days before the oldest ones start making cocoons.

I have to say, though, I do wish Gene was a little more excited by the miracle of life going on underneath our carport. For instance, when I asked him what he thought I should name the caterpillars, his suggestions were along the lines of “Squishy” and “Stompy”. Not cool. And when I bellowed “Honey come quick there’s an emergency!” he was annoyed that he barreled up the stairs only to discover I was talking about the spider that had somehow invaded the sanctuary. I was completely justified, though – I googled it and spiders totally chow down on defenseless caterpillars.