Power Outage

Today did not start off well. I woke up at 5:15 to the sound of beeping in the living room and downstairs. The UPS battery backups were complaining that the power was out (again). It was an overcast night, and the house was pitch dark; I could not even see my hand in front of my face. But I had a small flashlight right by the bed, and I quietly roamed around the house turning off the beeping batteries. I even made it back to bed without waking anyone up.

Fifteen minutes later, as I was trying to get back to sleep, Claire started calmly saying from her room, "Eyeball. Eyeball." At first this seemed like an odd thing to say. But I figured out what she meant pretty quickly. Normally if she hurts something or if something is not quite right, she will simply say the name of the offended body part, like saying "finger" if she were to hurt her finger. She did not sound panicked this morning, so I figured her actual eyeballs were okay. She must have been complaining that she could not see anything at all in the pitch dark, and maybe she was afraid here eyeballs were not working. I was impressed how calm she stayed when she suddenly realized she was, well, blind, and that she figured out a way to tell me that she could not see. I took her back to our room since it was still completely dark in the house and I did not want her to be scared.

We could not get her back to sleep since it was almost time for her to wake up anyways. But she laid down at the foot of our bed, asked for her blanket, pulled it over herself, and twice proclaimed "Sleepy time". She rested there, but did not sleep, for a little while. But by 6:00 am, she was off the bed and wandering down the hall to gather toy animals from around the house. Pretty soon she was asking for pancakes. So our day started a little early, but luckily we got the power back within about an hour, and everyone was happy and safe.