Lights Out!

So, Wednesday night (actually Thursday morning as it was 2:30 a.m.) I was just snoozing away. I had fallen asleep downstairs on the couch in front of the tv which is a recently aquired and horrible habit of mine. Suddenly, I woke to a pitch black house. Now, I still harbor an unnaturally childish fear of the dark, so I was a little skittish. The TV was off. The lamp on the nightstand was off. The light over the stove in the kitchen was off. Everything was eerily quiet. No air conditioner whirring, no faint television droning, no ice maker clicking in the freezer...NOTHING! I thought, "I know sometimes I sleepwalk, but I wouldn't have turned off all the lights and the tv." It finally hit me...the power's out, dummy! The whole neighborhood was black. Suddenly, I thought...David's CPAP!!!

David, my darling husband, sleeps with a mask that helps him breathe because he has sleep apnea...a CPAP. It's a machine that plugs into the wall. Once, when I was trying to get him out of bed, I turned it off while he was still dozing, and it nearly scared him to death because he was getting no air all of a sudden! He gasped like he'd been drowning, and I never did that again. Well, I got to the top of the stairs Wednesday night and heard him gasping and trying to catch his breath. We've always joked about what would happen if the power went out in the middle of the night. He'd be jolted awake when his CPAP cut off, and now we know. The power was out for about 30 minutes, and he snored in my ear almost the whole time. It was okay though. It was just starting to get on my nerves when the house sprang to life and he put his mask back on and we both went to sleep.

It just struck me as odd, though, at how loud and lit up our house actually is even in the middle of the night. While the power was out everything was truly silent and dark. I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was too quiet to sleep. Weird.