If I had only known

Eat dessert first, life is uncertain

Ay Díos mio! Another Sunday with no juice and no advance warning this time. Naturally I had planned to sew all day on my electric sewing machine.

Daytime power outages really don't bother me that much if I know about them ahead of time. After tending to the animals, I scoured Saturday's newspaper looking for any notice of this calamity, blaming myself for not reading the newspaper and thus preparing mentally and coffee-ically for another day without power. Ahah! There was none. How rude. It wasn't my fault we had no coffee.

I quickly developed a headache − no doubt due to lack of caffeine. El Jefe asked if I wanted him to drag out the emergency cooktop and tank of gas. Yeah....Nah....I don't care. He didn't. Instead I put on my sleep mask to darken the blinding sun and went back to bed. El Jefe took that as a sign that I really had a headache as I can never, I mean never, sleep while the sun is up − unless I have dengue or some other equally devastating illness.

Naturally, I couldn't sleep. J ended up making some coffee which was quite good and that dispelled the headache better than the ibuprofen I had taken earlier.

It was a long, long day. Four o'clock is that magical hour when the power generally is restored. Sometimes, as a special treat, the power is turned on 10 minutes early. Under ordinary circumstances, I rarely look at the clock. On no-power days, I look at the battery operated clock 50 times per day, mentally adding 20-25 minutes to the time because the clock is that slow.

Maybe the time is near: No, 1:00 p.m. An hour later, I look at the clock: 1:15. Half an hour later: 1:25. I go outside, spending at least two hours trimming some plants: 2:05. I read for awhile on the terraza: 3:00. I try to video a flock of birds in the trees: 3:15. I gather up some of my tropical gardening books hoping to get inspired. 3:45.

Alas, it was not to be. Four o'clock comes and goes. 4:10, 4:20, 4:35. So it is definitely going to be a 5:00 day. But then, by the clock it was 4:50, which should have been 5:15 real time and the power still wasn't back on! 5:25, 5:30, I was panicking. 5:35 − Finally!

From now on, I vow to make a pot of coffee every Saturday night and put it in the refrigerator.