Sounds like an analogy for my life, doesn't it?

We had a string of storms blow through DFW on Wednesday evening. They were lovely. Green clouds scudding across the sky. Lightning everywhere. Strong winds that blew up dust storms from construction areas before the rain came. I heard a tornado warning for Dallas and Collin counties on the radio on my way to church, and the Irving storm sirens were blasting as I drove down Roy Orr.

As I drove home later that night after Bible study, the power was off in most of Grand Prairie. Duncanville was in similar condition. The traffic light by the high school was working, but the next three or four to the south were out. Temporary stop signs were up between the lanes. By the time I saw the first ones, I was only 20 feet from them.

My van does not have anti-lock brakes. I skidded a good 50 feet. Just kept going and going and going. I finally came to a stop on the other side of the intersection.

Power was off in most of my neighborhood, including my house. And I had stopped at Kroger on the way home... I stuffed everything into the fridge and freezer and went to bed with the windows open, because the house was stuffy.

Three more storms blew through during the night. After the first, the storm sirens went off just as things got calm and quiet. (I guess they were to let us know we'd had a storm, in case anyone was unclear on the issue.) All three storms woke me with lightning and loud thunder, but there were no more sirens.

Yesterday morning the power was still off. I came to work, then left early for a dentist appointment in the afternoon. I was aghast at being billed over $700 for literally 15 minutes of the dentist's time! He put resin fillings on three lower front teeth with slightly exposed roots, where apparently some earlier fillings had fallen off. Didn't even use anesthetic. Just ground them down a little, dabbed on the epoxy, dried it, smoothed it.

I went home and found that my power was still off. I called Oncor, and got a message saying that they were aware of the outage and were working on it and a whole bunch more.

I had a small job to finish, installing an interesting double ceiling fan in a kitchen, so I left at 6:00 in the evening to do that. My clients did have power, fortunately. Their kitchen has a dropped ceiling with a recessed box in it that used to contain fluorescent lights. The plan was to install this double fan up inside the box so the fans and light hang just below the box opening:

I had to add a piece of wood across the top middle of the box, which required some carpentry and sheetrock work, and reroute an electric cable to the "pancake" electrical box that I installed on the new wood. This provided something secure to hang the fan from. I had done most of that work on Tuesday, so last night I finished smoothing and texturing the inside of the box, and hung the fan.

With the four-inch downrod, the fans ended up inside the box with no room for the blades. When I tried the longer downrod, I thought it might hang too low, but it had about five inches of clearance to the ceiling, which seemed about right. So I used the 12-inch downrod. I can (barely) walk under the fan blades, but wouldn't want to do it while they're running. The light kit comes down to the middle of my face. Fortunately, the clients (a missionary family with five boys) are short.

Here is an attempt to show what I've been talking about. The gray area is the recessed box in the ceiling, out of which the fan hangs. Sorry, I couldn't find a photo that included the light kit or the longer downrod. The light kit goes in the middle, between the fans.

There is a risk of the whole thing turning and viciously attacking the kitchen cabinets, so I recommended that they anchor it with fishing line (inside the recess) to prevent any unwanted rotation.

Anyway, when I got home, my power was still not on, even though one of my next-door neighbors had electricity. So I went to Kroger and bought a couple of bags of ice and put one in the freezer, one in the fridge.

Then I sat and read Robert Ludlum and Terry Pratchett by candlelight and remembered what it was like growing up in the jungle. (Most of our books seemed to have wax stains on the pages when I was a kid. My sister Martha once caught her mosquito net on fire reading in bed.)

Power was still off this morning. I thought about asking my neighbor to let me run a long extension cord to my kitchen. But the milk I poured on my cereal was still cool, and the ice in the bags in the refrigerator was nearly all still ice, so I decided to wait and see how things are this evening.