The Lights Are On, But...

You don’t realize how tied into your technology you are until it all goes away. I’m not necessarily talking about the fancy stuff, either. Not just the high speed Internet or the 75,000 television channels on satellite or even the careful massage of your Waterpik. Google. I mean, you miss those things if they disappear; sure you do. But none of them are required for basic survival. (Some would argue that high speed Internet is one of those survival things. But they’d be wrong.)

No: what I’m talking about are the simple, basic things we take for granted. The everyday “of course it’ll always be there” kind of things that make our lives easier in such unobtrusive ways that we’ve stopped noticing.

For example, being able to flush any ol’ time you want. When was the last time you thought of that as a luxury? Or being able to turn a tap and have water burst out. And not just water, but clean water. Water you can drink. How ‘bout this: the ability to flick a switch and have hot air pour into every corner of your home. Or being able to jump in your car with the reasonable expectation of going somewhere other than deeper into your driveway.

As you can tell from the tenor of this posting, we’re still dealing with physical issues in my world: challenges that have arisen due to this weird snowy storm. Sometimes the power works; sometimes it doesn’t. Ditto the phones. So we hunker down. Light lots of candles, pull out the Scrabble board, cook on the barbecue. We’ve been lucky -- luckier than some of our friends -- because we’ve gotten power often enough that our basic issues haven’t gotten to be issues, if you follow. Pretty much as it stops being fun, the power comes back on. And it all could be lots worse. Lots.

The photo I’ve posted is what our driveway looks like today. As you can see, I’m not going anywhere. Fortunately as it turns out, for the moment there’s no place I’d rather be.