Even Steven and Mother Nature Are Surely in Cahoots

I should have expected it, really. Nobody runs up a tab on Even Steven and gets away with it.

The past several days have been the opposite of the crap sandwich I was served a while back. It has been like dining on Beluga caviar spread on toast points laid with gold leaf, sprinkled liberally with white truffle shavings and saffron. Until today.

Yes, my life has been chugging along, right on track. We've all benefited lately from Magnanimous Mr. Even Steven. The Pony's ACT results were posted this week, and he achieved a 33 composite score. That's out of a perfect 36, mind you, and puts him right up there in the top 1% of composite ACT scores nationwide. Not too shabby for his first try, and being a lowly sophomore to boot! Hick had a day away from his workplace Friday to attend a meeting in Jefferson City. He was able to squeeze in a visit with Genius on his college campus on the way home. Plus, he scored a coup at the auction last night, with a scantily-clad pin-up girl (as opposed to those pin-up girls who wear Victorian swimsuits) on a Pepsi tray. Sure, it wasn't Coca Cola memorabilia. But it was good enough for Hick. I have no idea where he's going to find room to display it. That might require an addition onto his BARn.

What about me, you ask? I had a day off work Friday for the eye doctor, and a lengthy visit with my best old ex-teaching buddy Mabel. And when I stopped for gas station chicken to bring home for supper, the chicken man threw in an extra wing! AND when I took The Pony for his promised fast-food reward after the Walmart shopping today, the girl at the drive-thru window explained that a guy who passed through earlier had left enough money to pay for the man ahead of us, and still have $3.00 left to take off our order! Of course I was grateful. Though The Pony groused that if we had been just one car quicker, our whole $6.50 tab would have been paid. Not like he would ever pay it behind for anybody. We've all learned how he is really not interested in helping people.

So, there I was, flying high, all optimistic about my Sunday afternoon, having gotten up early to do that shopping in order to get home before the storm hit. Judging from the clouds, The Pony predicted that it would reach us within ten minutes of our home arrival. He was right. I was warming up my lunch in the oven, and asked him to toss out some old bread to the chickens. He came back reporting that the rain had started. No harm, no foul. I was inside, you see, in my house impervious to rain. Hick was somewhere on the grounds, as evidenced by the unlocked door and the absence of the fleabags who trail him and his Gator like greyhounds after a mechanical rabbit. I placed my lunch on a tray and headed down to my dark basement lair to grab a little internet time. As I set that tray beside New Delly, my desktop, Even Steven stabbed me through the heart.

THE POWER WENT OFF!

It flickered momentarily to give me false hope, then snapped off like a dad's big toe in a student's story about missing homework. At this moment, it is still off. My power. Not that dad's big toe. Thank goodness we found Hick in the BARn and commanded him to power up the generator. That's how I have internet. But not heat. Or lights. We have to be selective in our ampage. Computer and TV trump lights and heat.

With no estimated repair time in sight, I am settling in for a cold, dark evening. Hick immediately jumped into his Gator and took off to find the mitigating factor. Or, as he calls it, the tree that fell across the road and took down the power line. It's not far away. Just down at the bottom of our gravel hill, on the road up past the boys' land. Hick called to give me the transformer number and the pole number. I relayed that info to my brother-in-law the ex-mayor, who works for Ameren. It doesn't move us up the list for repairs, but it saves the crew from driving around looking for that tree needle in our boondocks haystack.

I wonder how many hours Even Steven will require until we are square...