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Flashlight in hand, I started packing. If we didn't have power by 10 PM, I was going to pack up my kid and my dogs and head for my parents' house three hours away. But, no! Appointments! Can't miss them! But the heat!

At this point I politely asked to be put in restraints.

Thank God we're lazy slobs at my house, and clean laundry rarely gets put away in a timely manner. "Packing" actually meant "pushing the laundry baskets with our clean clothes into the general vicinity of the front door". I grabbed a grocery bag and threw in the necessities - cell phone charger, iPod charger, drugs, knitting, and $1 cash, since I never remember to keep cash in my wallet. Your debit card won't work during the apocolypse, Sweetie!

In the past week we've stocked up on groceries. We're talking over 10 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the freezer. Oh, and the milk situation. Let me tell you about the milk situation ...

We get home dairy delivery, and have since the week Clara Jane was born. That's nearly two and a half years. Every Tuesday night, we stick a cooler on our front porch. Wednesday morning, in the wee hours, B. brings the cooler into the house, where magical elves have filled it with dairy goods overnight. Well, except for this week. Our delivery guy - the same delivery guy who has serviced our house for nearly two and a half years - forgot us. Forgot!

B. called the dairy to see what was up. They offered to deliver our goods Thursday, which wouldn't work. It's going to be the hottest day of the year and no one will be home. Our milk, it will rot! Friday's no good, either, because then we'll have to go buy milk in the meantime. Frankly, if I wanted to run to the store to buy nothing but milk, I wouldn't pay someone to bring me my milk. That's the whole point of having milk delivery.

After several teeth were pulled and a few hoops jumped through, our milk arrived Wednesday morning afternoon, just in time to rot in our electricity-free house.

So, the frantic packing continued. At 9:30, I was changing my clothes. I had been wearing the official uniform of fleeing for your life from Mother Nature: no shoes, no bra, baggy gym shorts, and a stained t-shirt. Call me non-conformist, but I thought I'd dress up our evacuation and go with shoes and support garments. Just as I was pulling my shirt over my head, the lights flickered on. Well! That means it'll be back shortly. All evacuation came to a halt, which was just as well. When word reached my hometown that we were coming, my parents' air conditioner up and died.

I think it goes without saying that I didn't sleep. At 12:30, tired of listening to my snoring dog, my snoring husband (who normally sleeps with an electric-powered device that prevents him from sounding like a bulldozer), and the sounds of my neighborhood drifting through our open windows: Molly Hatchet, police sirens, illegal fireworks and my next-door neighbor's voice because sweet Jesus not even a blackout can shut that woman up, I moved to living room. As I picked up my quilt, hallelujah! The lights came back! B. got up and we unpacked the three coolers of groceries. It also seemed that during our frantic packing, vandals broke in to fill our sink with dirty dishes and leave leftovers strewn about the kitchen and dining room, so we did some middle of the night cleaning before turning into bed, confident that the system works, the lights will stay lit forever, and all is right in the world. Praise Jesus! We've been saved from a night of suffering mild discomfort!

Thursday continued business as usual. Appointments were fulfilled, daycare provided. Shortly after Clara Jane and I returned home, she was whining that I wouldn't let her watch three hours of "Teletubbies", and I was whining that it was too hot to make dinner.

As punishment, God once again took away our electricity.

But it was just there! It'll come back! It came back last night! Instead of working ourselves into yet another meat-packing, laundry-flinging ball of collective panic, we opted to go out for dinner. Surely by the time we returned, the lights would be back.

We won't even talk about how crazy overrun all five open restaurants in town were. We got lucky and beat the crowd by 45 seconds. God loves us!

But he doesn't love us enough to give us electricity. We returned home to no power, and picked up the panic ball where we'd left it. The food went back in the coolers, the laundry baskets back in front of the door, and the duct tape in hand to put my shit back together again.

This time, fleeing to my hometown wasn't as simple. The good news was the air conditioner was once again working. The bad news: far-flung family members were converging on my parents' house for a big ol' fish fry. Oh! But that's not all!

A lot of people in my hometown - including my parents - are registered with the chamber of commerce to rent spare bedrooms in their homes. It's not as nice as a bed and breakfast, but not as squalid as a boarding house. The rooms are primarily rented during the state fair to vendors who come from around the country, work 14-hour days, and need a cheap place to bathe and sleep. My parents registered their house last year, but hadn't had any renters. I was a-ok with that, as I wasn't thrilled about the idea of carnies sleeping in my childhood bedroom and murdering my parents in their sleep. I swore that Clara Jane wouldn't be allowed to visit my parents at any time when strangers were afoot.

Thursday night, my parents had their very first boarder. And, HA!, the joke's on me, because not only is Clara Jane going to be there, but I'm going to be sleeping in the room next to the carney, and sharing a bathroom with her!

Okay, so she wasn't a carney. She was a very nice lady from Lima, Peru. She's lived in St. Louis - just a mile up the road from me, actually - for twenty years and teaches elementary school. She planned to take Amtrak from St. Louis to Sedalia, arriving towards the end of Hillbilly Fishfest 2006. The next morning, she would hit the Katy Trail and start biking her way back home.

I wanted to just take my shit, my kid, and my dogs, get in my truck, and drive the three hours myself without production so I could meet my carney demise. But we can't have that, can we? We can't do anything with the lights out unless it's a three-ring circus. It's called The Carney Effect. B. insisted on driving the first half with me, meeting my dad at a truck stop, transferring me, my kid, my dogs, and my shit back into the protective custody of my father, who would then drive us to my hometown while B. returned home. I thought this was a tad bit of overkill, but they talked me into it. And yeah, I'll admit, I'm glad to have had the help and backup. My plan would have worked, but it would have sucked.

We arrived at my parents' house a little after midnight, shortly after my mom returned from the train station with her non-carney boarder, the train delayed five hours due to the power outages. While waiting for the train, my mom had to inform a posse of young Amish kids that perhaps putting your head on the railroad tracks to listen for the oncoming train isn't the smartest idea.

And here we are. B.'s going to stay in St. Louis. At least, that was the plan an hour ago. It could change. Clara Jane and I were going to come spend a week with my parents soon anyway. So what if our vacation got moved up a few days. It's no biggie. While this has all been a big pain in the ass, it could have been much, much worse. Could have been better, but all told, I'm feeling pretty lucky.

I'm also feeling very, very, very tired.