Bad Luck

The strangest things happen when my parents come to visit me.  Things that I have never seen happening before come to pass.

When I was an intern here years ago, my parents came to visit.  You can imagine that they were nervous about having their daughter living on her own in a big city.  My dad would always lecture me on being safe and I always said, "oh dad, it's fine.  I never see anything crazy here and always feel safe."  And then they come to visit...

We were riding the metro.  Something I rode several times a day and never saw anything weird.  In their one visit, we saw a gross looking bum skulking in the train car and a transvestite in full outlandish drag.  Two things that would absolutely not make them feel more comfortable about me being here all alone.

This time, the power went out and Heber contracted hand foot and mouth disease.  No, I'm not kidding.  These are two things that I've never seen happen to such an epically bad degree.

Friday night we were standing on our deck and watched a storm blow in.  There were flashes of lightning and crashes all over and then the lights went off.  My initial reaction to power going out is excitement.  I have to admit that it's a little bit of an adventure to find your way around in the dark.  But then it stayed off.  For days.  In 100 degree and humidity heat that can make any place feel stifling.  There is nothing fun or exciting with that.

The first day we escaped to the air conditioned halls of Ford's Theater.  When we returned home, the lights were on!  And then off they went again but not everywhere, just our building.  All the lights were on around us just taunting us with their air conditioning.  

It got progressively hotter in our house and Heb got rapidly sicker.  Gone were all plans of dates with just Heb and I (I was so looking forward to those).  The situation was looking bleak.  On Sunday we went to the movies.  It was all we could do to get out of the heat.  And escaped again into the city but poor Heb was to sick to join us. 

As a side, can I say that I love being married to an engineer.   Heber somehow figured out how to harness power from our car batteries to run a fan.  That man is a genius.

Anyway, the power finally came back on Monday afternoon.  I have never in my life been so happy to have electricity.  We survived and Heber did too.  He's getting better everyday.

We had such a nice visit with my parents.  They were such good sports about it all and it's so nice to have people around that just think you're wonderful all the time.  Sometimes I need that in my life.  Perhaps, though, we need to prepare better for the next time they visit.