I’m going to blame it on the moon. She was cool and shimmery in her slim golden gown like a bygone Hollywood actress, as I watched her crescent shape light up her golden hue just a little, as if smiling directly at me. I should have known I was in for a roller coaster ride that week.
From my exchange with the crescent moon, things got swiftly rather more interesting. Our friends at PG&E decided that, yet again, our neighborhood and others nearby should be targeted for rolling power blackouts. To their credit, they did give us some warning, but holy baloney, we live in a neighborhood with underground power lines, shouldn’t that be of some consideration? I can think of way more fire prone areas to pick on than ours! Our neighbor is a vineyard, for crying out loud. Nice and damp all the time!
It was pretty hot that day and we thought we should enjoy the air conditioning before the power failed on us for 24 long hours! The screen on the A/C reader was blank. Oh, I wonder if the issues we have been having with rats in our attic might have something to do with that rather alarming discovery. Our Rat Guy — now a close friend, obviously — went up into the attic on his 100th visit to our place and then explained to us that the remaining Rat King was just having fun with all of us. The rest of his minions had likely legged it via the various routes they had made up there, but the King was still up there in his Attic Palace having a few jokes, throwing dust mites at the traps and figuring out how to further evade capture.
“C’mon, Rat King! We are but mere mortals!” I begged — like in the movies. Now I was starting to take it personally.
The Rat Boy could not see any obviously chewed lines to our newish heater or A/C in the attic, even though that was a little beyond his proclaimed job description, and our go-to A/C expert was happily traveling in New Mexico, when we called to beg him to, please-drop-everything and come over. No A/C and no fans made for two really grumpy old people. We knew that the contents of our fridge and freezer would be toast after the threatened 24 hours with no power and we still could not quite understand how we had been targeted by our utility company to be yet again shut down. We live next to the vineyard on basically prairie land, so we are hardly to be imagined as the most precarious neighborhood in these parts for fire fuel and danger. Oh, and did I mention, the power lines are under the ground…
But there’s little anyone can do against a large, modern monster except rage against the machine. We needed to spend the day on the road in our air-conditioned truck, in any case, to go up to Sacramento and pick up our granddaughter for a few days. Since her father couldn’t make it down with his family for our weekend party (in actual fact, the weekend was initially planned to celebrate his birthday), we didn’t want our granddaughter to be disappointed and elected to make the rather tedious trip north to fetch her. Such nice grandparents! We had also purchased tickets for the Monterey Aquarium for us all to enjoy with her.
It was Official Power Outage Day in the hood. We left the house at 9 a.m. and returned home at about 7 p.m. We did not go into a time travel warp. Simply 10 hours on the road with a few stops for bathrooms and refreshments. (I look forward to being able to rent one of those Doby heli-choppers from Marina to make that journey a bit more bearable and brief!) The 680 was her usual blissful self — poor drivers and potholes about calls it, along with too many cars refusing to indicate what they were doing. Soon we had our precious package on board and were headed home, worried about our hot pups in the backyard. (They did have shelter, water and food, but still they prefer the normal A/C or the fan inside like the spoilt mutts they are!)
Our granddaughter splashed around in the pool, so happy to be back at our place, out of the vehicle and ready to enjoy a few days away from the city. We ate our dinner of quesadillas by candlelight, which was all a bit fun — like a camping adventure without the bugs and bad mattresses.
Granddaughter wakes up the next morning, after a sleepless night because of the heat, the barking pups and her grandma snoring, apparently, not feeling so well. We take her temperature. Yes, she had one that she did not have the day before — 102. She said she was tired. She didn’t really want to eat. We receive a “may day may day” call from her father stating that he had just tested positive for Covid. Noooooo! And, sure enough, though our granddaughter emphatically declared that she did not have Covid, two consecutive tests costing $9 a piece made it very apparent that she did.
Well fish. Her mother kindly took my “may day may day” call and made the long trip to and from Sacramento to pick her up. By about 10 p.m. the same day, we were empty nesters again. What a whirlwind! With the winds still blowing pretty high in the trees, the power came back on, and we were able to enjoy the things we take so very much for granted, like a light, a television, a fridge, a fan. The A/C was still not showing up for work and our A/C guy was still allegedly enjoying his time in New Mexico, but I don’t think I can blame that on the moon.
“Shooting star!” proclaimed husband from his habitual position in the sofa facing the sliding glass door. Oh, is she in on it too? I did have to wonder. It had been such a cluster of a week.
It’s about time for the anniversary of my sister’s death and she’s always in my aura about this time. It would be easy to blame it on her! She loved to have a good joke and a giggle at my expense — (haha, big sis) — and she would likely find all that chaos we were experiencing very funny. As a dragonfly flew past my face and then back again, I heard a little singsong voice “Don’t blame it on the sunshine, don’t blame it on the moonlight. Blame it on the boogie…”
Oh, that little minx. We’ll try Operation Granddaughter again in about two weeks time, hoping that the fates or my sister will be a bit kinder the next time around. Maybe A/C guy will be back from his extended vacation in New Mexico and easily fix our A/C without the necessity of a second mortgage, maybe Rat Guy will finally capture the Rat King and, a big hopefully, maybe, that nasty Covid virus will have vacated the bodies of our family members and moved on to other pastures more deserving. Some stories you simply cannot make up.
Lucy Jensen may be reached at lu*************@***il.com.
