It was a cold March afternoon—the kind of cold where the wind isn’t just blowing, it’s out there auditioning for The Exorcist, trying to rip trees out of the ground and fling lawn ornaments into orbit. Garden gnomes were flying past like they were trying to escape their contracts. People walked around hunched over like gremlins, praying they wouldn’t get yeeted into the next county.

And then…it began.

One by one, houses around me went dark. Street by street. Town by town. The wind was out there committing powerline homicide, and I was sitting in my living room whispering, “Not me, Lord. Not today. I pay my bills. I recycle. I mind my business. PLEASE.”

Because when you live in the country and the power goes out? Baby, that’s not an inconvenience—that’s a full-blown Oregon Trail reenactment. No water. No heat. No flushing the toilet. No shower. No coffee. No will to live. Just me, my phone, and the creeping realization that I was about to smell like a Civil War reenactor.

But I still had hope. I still had faith. I still had TikTok.

Then—right in the middle of Mr. Dunn the Weather Man explaining the outages—my TV went poof. The internet went poof. The heat went poof. My soul left my body. We were plunged into darkness.

Well… okay, it was 5 p.m., so technically it was still light out. But emotionally? Spiritually? Existentially? DARK.

I scrambled like a raccoon in a Dollar General dumpster. Fake candles? FOUND. Batteries? LOADED. Battery banks? CHARGED. I was ready to survive the apocalypse—or at least a mildly inconvenient 24 hours.

Then came the obsession.

The Power Outage Map™.

I refreshed that thing like it owed me money. Every time I checked, the situation got worse. Entire towns were dark. Cities were blinking out like Thanos snapped his fingers. Meanwhile, I was sitting there like, “Please, God, I’ll be good. I’ll stop talking about people. I’ll stop judging my neighbors’ yard décor. JUST GIVE ME ELECTRICITY.”

My aunt—who is both my neighbor and the most impatient woman in the tri‑county area—called the electric company. She told them a line was down in her yard. The man on the phone, who apparently thinks he’s Professor X, said, “Ma’am, that’s not a powerline. That’s a cable line. I can see it from here.”

Sir. You cannot see your own shoelaces from there.

But he promised the power would be back by the end of the night, so we went to bed hopeful.

Morning came.

Power did not.

Heat did not.

Water did not.

Ohio, meanwhile, woke up and chose WINTER. Again.

I was cold, hungry, unshowered, and smelling like a medieval peasant. The fridge was slowly turning into a biohazard. The milk was evolving into a new lifeform. The meat was auditioning for The Walking Dead.

I called the electric company. They told me nothing. NOTHING. Just “best wishes” like they were signing my yearbook.

Then my phone died.

That’s when my dad snapped.

He called the electric company, and unlike me, he got a human being immediately. (I think the universe feared him.) He explained that the downed line wasn’t just down—it was in a tree, split in half, one end in the neighbor’s yard, the other in my aunt’s. Basically, the powerline had committed a full-blown acrobatic stunt routine.

He added a little dramatic flair, saying things like, “My dog could step on it and DIE,” and “What if someone walks outside and gets ELECTROCUTED?” The woman on the phone laughed, took notes, and probably wrote “Sir is unhinged but entertaining.”

Then he said the magic words:

“I’ll fix it myself. I’ve got a ladder.”

Thirty minutes later—THIRTY MINUTES—trucks rolled up like the cavalry in a Hallmark movie. They fixed the line. Within the hour, the lights came on.

I have never been so happy to hear a furnace kick on. I could’ve cried. I could’ve hugged the vent. I could’ve written a love letter to the toilet.

We cooked dinner. We flushed. We showered. We lived again.

And I swear on every flying lawn gnome in Ohio: I NEVER want to go through that again.

People in the old days were built DIFFERENT. Because if this is what the 1800s felt like? Absolutely not. I would’ve died on Day 1.