Let There Be Light

I thought I had put my small portable heater away for good last week. It was so warm; I was really wondering how it could possibly get any hotter come summer. There were a few nights where I had to sleep with my large fan on and I think I still woke up periodically sweating throughout the night. Surprise, surprise, I pulled the heater back out today after waking up freezing this morning. It is sort of like being in Delaware where you have no idea what the weather will be the next day or in the middle of the day. At least in Florida you always know; in the summer it will rain mid-afternoon for about and hour or so, so get your outdoor activities out of the way in the morning and in the winter it will be freezing in the morning and late at night, but you can assume that it will be warm enough for just a long sleeve shirt or less during the day.

I’ll have you know that I just sat in the dark for 15 minutes with my headlamp reading because we thought our electricity was out (i.e. Albert said it was out and I didn’t question because they light switches didn’t work). It “went out” around 6 p.m. when I was working on the computer after work, but it wasn’t yet dark enough to be a problem or notice that we seemed to be the only ones without electricity. I think we also accepted it because earlier this week the water was cut off across Kimberley until the next morning and another day we all lost electricity. The water goes out all the time because there are major pipes that burst and spew water everywhere. In the area that the pipe is it could look like a flood, even though it never ever rains here. After reading for a bit, I stood up to look out the window, turned off my headlamp and just wondered for a second how long it would be out this time. At that moment I noticed that the lights in the neighboring house were on and that the outdoor lights in our complex were on. I decided that the best thing for me to do would be to go to our landlord’s house to ask him if he knew was what wrong with just our small building. Unfortunately, though their lights were on, there was no answer. Defeated, I returned to my small apartment/house surrendering to the idea that I would spend my evening in darkness. I was looking at the electricity reader (we have to prepay for electricity here), which read full considering I bought new electricity yesterday and I noticed the switchboard for the electricity in the house. I then noticed that the main switch was stuck halfway between green and red so I switched it to green. Nothing, still no lights, no refrigerator white noise. So I switched off the smaller switches and then back on again in an effort to reset them. Still nothing. I then switched the main switch to red, because really what other option did I have and poof, magic, we now have our electricity working again. It is very much a necessity because now I can turn my heater on, go take a hot shower, and snuggle in my warm bed and watch a movie.