Monday, February 22, 2010

Candlelight

By Friday night, we had a functioning dishwasher and stove. I thought, “Yay! We are good to go. Everything’s back to normal.” Hehe.

Saturday afternoon, the power went out for about ten minutes. I should have known that was a portent. Saturday evening the power went out. Jacob studied Shakespeare by candle light. Luke studied for a biology exam surrounded by seven candles. I told him that he was like Abraham Lincoln who studied by candlelight.

I sat in a hot bath encircled by candles. It was vaguely romantic, until I had to shave my legs. Let’s just say that it’s not an ideal situation. There’s a reason women didn’t shave until the modern era—electricity.

Eventually, I got frustrated and called EPB (our electricity provider). After an interminable hold during which I punched in an infinite number of buttons, I finally got a recording saying, “We are unable to process your call.” Just as I was sucking in breath to scream at them (metaphorically, of course) the power came back on.

Afterwards I discovered that boys, no matter what their age, love to play with hot wax. I have dried circles of candle wax everywhere—now I know what they were doing while I was in the bath. In a few minutes, they will be learning how to scrape dried wax. Yep, parenting is not for sissies.

3 comments:

  1. Like Abe, eh? Isaac Newton also did his research by candlelight, which only lead to a fire which burnt all his papers and resources!!

    (Of course, there is barely any connection between Abe and Isaac, which makes me wonder why I comapred the two. Humph.)

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  2. I scraped up all the wax I spilled before you told me to.

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  3. We had to cook by candle light once. The chicken did not cook too well. Neither did the little lava cakes.
    The grill worked better, though. Still not for the lava cakes:(

    I hope your house will stop having the vapors soon.

    Grace Duke

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