Friday morning I was feeling smug about being one of the people with electricity —but by 11am our household joined the nearly 200,000 in the region plunged into darkness by the ice storm.

Ann and Zack fled to a friend’s house, but I decided to huddle in the darkness and ride out the disaster. There I was with my glow sticks and headlamp, curled up with the dogs. At 1am I couldn’t sleep, so I texted Alex. I’ve written before about how long it takes me to compose a text message, so at about 1:15 he got this:

no electricity at home just me scarlett and maddy

Naturally, he was awake —probably out having fun.

haha why isnt there power

Hmmm. Somebody hasn’t been reading the paper.

ice storm widespread chaos will eat dogs eventually

The dogs stirred uneasily. He wrote back:

lol well cats before dogs

Good point. I fell back to sleep wondering about in which order I’d eat the pets. Let’s hope the power comes back on before push comes to shove.