You may have noticed that Word Nymph didn’t post yesterday.
Following 100 consecutive daily posts (except Sundays), the streak was broken yesterday by a series of outages here in the Washington, D.C., area. The irony is that yesterday I had planned to send out a hello-world-I’m-here notice about the 100th post. The one person who asked me yesterday, “hey, where’s my blog?” pointed out that one never says a word when one is on any kind of a streak. Like a pitcher headed toward a perfect game, I learned that I was about to speak too soon about Word Nymph‘s streak.
I don’t know if our power and cable outages made national news–because I have no TV service. Internet comes and goes, and it was reported this morning that it could be some time before power is restored to the region. The Washington area takes enough heat about its drivers. You can only imagine what happens at a dark intersection. Most of us are aware that, by law, intersections without working traffic lights are to be treated as four-way stops but, in typical Washington fashion, there is wide interpretation.
Please accept my apologies for yesterday’s lapse. Most readers are now thinking, there was a lapse?
I know I don’t owe anyone an explanation, but it’s just too good not to share.
I’ll first say that my neighborhood didn’t lose power; we seldom do. We’re a little unexplained oasis. But we lost cable Sunday afternoon. Around the region, trees snapped like matchsticks all over our county, taking power lines and, tragically, the life of a young boy who could not get out of the way in time.
Yesterday morning, determined to not break the Word Nymph streak, I set out to find Internet. I first drove to the home of my aunt and uncle, to use their Internet and also pick up a bee removal suit my husband wanted to borrow. I arrived at their house to find a note taped to their door: No power, no phone service, no cell service, back later. I decided to try and find them to make sure they were all right. Given the downed trees and power lines and dark intersections, driving was a challenge. I drove to five places I thought they might be riding out the crisis–my aunt’s nail salon, her health club, Macy’s, the movie theater and Starbucks. I planned Starbucks for last so I could settle in and use the wireless. Everything was closed–including Starbucks.
I went home, resigned to the unavailability of Internet and worried about my aunt and uncle, and went out back to clean up the storm debris. As I was filling a large bag with broken limbs, I looked up to see another large bag being hurled toward me from over the six-foot fence. I approached it cautiously, as I had been feeling all day that this might just be the end of the world. I peeked inside and saw something wrapped in netting. It was a bee removal suit.
I opened the gate to find my aunt and uncle. I told them I had been worried sick and had looked everywhere I could think they might be. I scolded them, “Where have you been?!”
“Holy Cross Hospital,” my aunt said. I hadn’t thought to try the hospital.
“Are you all right? What were you doing at the hospital?”
“Getting coffee.”
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But, after losing power again yesterday, something struck me. Without juice, it’s hard to tell time.
I remembered that we received six clocks—none electric—as wedding gifts 27 years ago. It was comforting to rediscover that some if not most of those are still around. Then I remembered the trusty timepiece my husband brought into our marriage, a relic from the 1950s, when his father sold shoes for a living.
Word Nymph 