it's not every day you get to "ghetto the cat"

I’ve had the day from Hell. Not just your average day from Hell either. It was an authentic, fire and brimstone, forked tongue, red-headed-dude with the pointed rake, day from Hell.

(Okay, rake…pitchfork…whatever.)

My power was out.  All. Day. Long. And without power can’t charge your cell phone, or your laptop. And you  most definitely can’t get on the internet. And this makes for a day from Hell.

My husband, who was working from home, decided he would go to the coffee shop to hop on the WiFi, and have a cup of coffee while we waited for the electric company to come fix the outage in our area.

After wearing out his welcome at the local Starbucks, he picked me up and we went for lunch at the closest restaurant with a WiFi connection. The next stop was the book store, where we set up camp for several hours until our laptop batteries were going dead. The chicken shop around the corner had a booth with an electrical outlet, so we moved in there for a few hours, where I ate enough buffalo chicken dip to feel sick, and drank enough Diet Coke to stay awake for a month.

We played this musical WiFi game all day long, until finally I felt compelled to run home to feed the dogs.

So I left my husband in a parking lot, on a conference call, while I went home to stumble around my house in the dark, searching for candles and batteries. (Someone needs to remind me to stock up on candles, batteries and flashlights, by the way, because I didn’t seem to have a single one!)

Finally, after almost twelve hours without electricity, the power came back on…just in time for dinner. And since my husband was already in the parking lot of our favorite restaurant, it only seemed fitting to meet him there to eat.

Several drinks later, I was sending text messages and tweets without bothering to read them (something I’d sworn, just days ago, I would never do again) and I managed to tell the world I was gonna ghetto the cat, whatever that means. I think I was saying I was gonna go to the car, but after three drinks I really don’t know what I was trying to say. Maybe I really was about to “ghetto the cat”. Henry Chow would be a cool ghetto cat, with gold chains and a tattoo. After all, when he was taken by an owl, the owl brought him back. Only a ghetto cat could be that cool, right?

Until the next time…I’ll be nursing a hangover!

Copyright © 2000-2018, Erica Lucke Dean. All rights reserved. Any retranscription or reproduction is prohibited and illegal.
Posted on February 27, 2012 .