Power

I know you're all dying of curiosity - when did my power come back on, you ask? Well, chirren, let me tell you. It was off from 3 p.m. Thursday to 7 p.m. Saturday night. And though it's a trip to the carnival to wash your pits in a soup pot, I'm here to testify that even that kind of fun can get old. Fast.

So, Saturday night we bugged out to a hotel where we cranked the heat to high and marinated in near-scalding bath water until we turned into chunk-style stew. Then we poured outselves into bed and slept like dead crickets at the bottom of a mine shaft. It was glorious.

When we got home, the road looked like sherpas had been pulling wooden carts over it all day. It was a glossy sheet of thick ice broken only in two narrow parallel tracks where slush and muddy ice water cut ruts in squishy clay.

Slush. I hate that word.