Panic on the Yellow Brick Road...

This is one of last week's many finishes: leftovers from my first Yellow Brick Road project a few years ago. Due to time constraints, I fell back on my favorite funky-line quilting; I've done this on a few pieces over the past year and I love the look it produces -- even if it does appear as if I've been chugging tequila at my sewing machine.

It is the second of two quilts destined for a twin baby shower last Sunday afternoon, and I was on schedule to finish it with time to spare. And by "time to spare," I mean thirty or forty minutes. An hour, max -- enough to get a shower in, do the hair up nice and stop for gas on the way.

I've been time challenged all my life, and I've learned to accept it. It's just the way I roll.

I was just adding the binding at about 7:30 that morning when:

Pfffft! Grrrrrrrrrrrzt! Gzzzzzzzzzt!

Darkness.

Silence.

I know onomatopoeia is subject to interpretation, but to me, that's the sound of the power going out. And not just in my place (because there was a brief moment there where I questioned whether I'd forgotten to pay the electric bill) -- it was out for blocks in all directions. A call to the power company revealed that yes, they were aware of the outage, and estimated power wouldn't be back up until eleven.

What came out of my mouth next was a string of expletives that I'll leave to your imagination. I only had about two feet of binding attached, and nobody with power close enough that I could pack up and go finish it somewhere else.

This is not the first time I have wished for Ed Begley's bike generator -- while he uses his to make toast every morning, I have a dream of using one to power my sewing machine and laptop, at the same time returning my butt to its pre-desk jockey shape. It's the greatest motivator I can think of: unless I pedal, I wouldn't be able to sew...or blog.

So I took a shower. In the dark. Because when the power goes out, so does the electronic ignition on the hot water heater, and it was a very good bet that most of my young neighbors were still sleeping off the previous night's revelry, oblivious to the fact that the early risers in the building were in the process of emptying the tank. Heh, heh.

And as the day inched painfully slowly toward eleven and I had cleaned myself, and cleaned up all my fabric scraps and sorted through some piles and watered the plants and played a few little ditties on the piano and did anything else I could think of that didn't require electricity, I determined that there was NO WAY IN HELL I could finish sewing on the binding and then stitch it down by the time I had to leave at 12:30.

Admitting defeat, I placed a sheepish call to the shower's hostess to tell her I'd be arriving a little later than anticipated.

"Oh!" She replied. "Didn'tyougetmye-mail?" She's a really fast talker.

Um, no. I have no power. (and, I might add, a really sucky battery in my computer)

"Theywenttothehospitalatthreeo'clockthismorningthinkingshewasinlaborbutshe'snot." (deep breath)
"Whichisgoodbecausefourweeksistooearlyandanywaythey'rekeepingherthere."
(The showeree is over 40, considered high risk)
"Sowe'llhavetoreschedule...noshowertoday!"

She hung up with a breezy "Haveagreatday!" and as my hair began to grow back from the spots where I'd torn it out and my blood pressure returned to normal, the refrigerator brrr-urped to life, the next door neighbor's air conditioner lurched into its familiar annoying hum, and all was right again with my little world.