Let's be Thankful

This is a story of thankfulness.

We should all be thankful. For example, I am thankful for the good people at WE Energies, who cut my power just now and said they sent a letter a couple weeks ago letting everyone on the block know that they were replacing transformers.

Side note: these are not the cool transformers that change from cars into robots and save the world but instead the boring grey cubes that just hang up in the air and hum menacingly as they provide delicious power to the good people of the world until WE energies comes and hacks them down, much in the same way that big companies cut down helpless trees to make way for cows in the rain forest.

I digress.

I am also thankful for the sale at Target on the cool LED candles that I bought too many of that allowed me to take a shower in near darkness. Of course I wouldn't have had to take the shower in near darkness if WE Energies hadn't cut the power without warning after sending a letter that I ignored probably.  

I'm thankful for the way that power, or lack thereof, does not affect our water supply in the homes, as it is all based on water pressure. Why we can't attach tiny little water wheels in the pipes and convert  some of that kinetic energy into electricity when your son takes a 30 minute shower I don't know.

I'm thankful that I opened my garage door, which would allow me to leave right now, but would be a bad idea as the door would stay open. I'm especially thankful for all the WE Energies trucks that parked in front of my driveway which caused me to open the door to display the car in the first place, in a "Look, vehicles enter and exit here" sort of demonstration.

I'm thankful for the laws of thermodynamics, which are keeping the food in my refrigerator from converting into something that would make me and my kids sick, for at least a few more hours. Why WE Energies wouldn't keep in mind the four-hour limit when disconnecting someone from the grid like the way that Neo gets kicked off The Matrix I'll never know.

My great IQ is also one of the things I am thankful for, which continues to tell me to click on and off the light switches as I enter and exit rooms, even though I know the bulbs will not light up right now, much in the way that ET, The Extra Terrestrial's light wouldn't come back on when they thought he was dead. He was just just being subjugated by a government agency. Ahem.

I'm thankful for the weather, or global warming, which hasn't completely saturated the ground around my house so that now that my sump pump has been disabled, my basement will not flood, at least for now. Perhaps after I eat the spoiled meats in my refrigerator I will stumble downstairs in a tainted meat stupor to discover that indeed there are many inches of water greeting me. For now I will live in blissful avoidance and thankfulness.

I'm thankful for my editor, Sarah Worthman, who was able to understand the nuances of sarcasm and humor and allow this to be published. I'd also like to thank her for the fact that I could actually write "I'd like to thank my editor" since even though I have a few things published, I've never used those words in a forward.

Finally I'd like to thank the gentleman from WE Energies I spoke to outside, in the grey, unmarked tshirt who handled my rants with aplomb and tact. Thank you, unmarked, tall stranger.

Final note: In the end, the power was actually off for about two hours.