Left in the dark

I'm still in search of my blogging mojo. I know I can find it ... someday, somewhere.

For better or worse, I am blaming high school basketball season for the absent mojo. After all, since the start of the year I've been gone at games three and four nights a week after a regular day at work. So when I finally get to stay home for the final hours of the day, I'm tired and don't feel very creative. All the basketball doesn't leave a lot of time for other pursuits. Last week, I had games on four consecutive nights, and I was very stressed out. My back, my neck, my shoulders were so tight.

But pretty soon I'll have to find a new excuse. Basketball season is nearly over. The two girls teams I cover both lost during their district tournament last week. The two boys teams start district play Monday night, and I expect one to drop out right away. The other could go on a while, but we're getting pretty near the end. Soon, I'll have a little more time for creative pursuits.

The weather got a little warmer last week--even warm enough to melt some of the snow. Tonight we're going back down close to zero, and we have a couple days later this week forecast for highs below 20. But it will be easier to take with a lot of the snow melted. Why, you can even see patches of brown grass in parts of the back yard now!

We had our own adventure one night last week. The basketball game went long (last home game of the season), and I didn't leave for home until about 9 p.m. The trip home is along a highway that goes through some hills in a rural area, so I expected it to be dark. But the yellow flashing light at the first intersection after the hills was not working, and the bar at that corner was dark. Strange. I went further and saw that I wasn't seeing any lighted houses along the road. Strange. All the way into town--the plaza west of downtown, the McDonald's, the gas stations as you enter the downtown area--it was dark. Strange.

The house was just as dark as I got out of the car, and I thought of something to tell my wife when I came through the door: "Honey, we'd better get that motion-sensor light checked out again--it didn't come on!"

She reported the power had gone out at about 8:40 p.m. (cause unknown). "OK," I said, "but didn't you want to watch ER?" Several candles had been lighted upstairs and downstairs. We sat on the living room couch, and it was just bright enough for me to notice that the cats were walking around, acting puzzled. We talked for a while. Then I held a little flashlight while she got the cats' food ready, while she took her pills, and then we went upstairs. After all, what is there to do when the power is off and you can't watch TV or get on the computer and the house is only lit by candles? What can you do?

My wife came up with an idea.

And just as we were finishing up, the lights came back on. That didn't rush the post-coital cuddling, but after a while she drifted off to sleep, and I got up for a few minutes, to reset clocks and switch off the lights that were on.

Then, two nights later, I went through the house again, changing the clocks once again because of the arrival of daylight time.

I enjoy seeing the sun up longer in the evening. Of course, it will be darker in the morning, but the time change (whenever it happens) means brighter evenings and the promise of warmer weather ahead.

I have some new (well, relatively new; you haven't seen them, anyway) pictures of the cats, and I'll write something up for that pretty soon. I haven't felt very creative with the camera lately, but the arrival of warmer weather should encourage me to get out and around.

After all, there's more to life that the sound of a rubberized ball endlessly bouncing on a hardwood floor. Isn't there?