Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never by Lancaster, Jen (e books free to read .txt) 📕

I’m not going to be disconnected from the real world. I send out a quick status update to my friends and about half of them are in the dark, too. I invite everyone up for an impromptu pool party, but they’re all busy with “meetings” and “day jobs” and “children.” More sun for me then!

I kick back in a lawn chair, reading the books I’ve been meaning to get to forever and I spend this gorgeous day chilling out, maxing, relaxing all cool. [Ten points if you caught the Fresh Prince reference.] Fletch runs out to buy more ice for our coffin and when he returns, we transfer the contents of the freezer.

Every couple of hours, I wander back into the house for radio updates. The last time, the outage affected a quarter of a million people and as I checked the radio all day, those numbers rapidly diminished. But today, every time I tune in the numbers rise. Earlier this morning we hit three hundred thousand and at this point, it’s six hundred thousand.

Today would be an excellent day to start my new career as a generator salesman.

A few weeks ago, the outages were really random. Like, one side of the street had electric and the other didn’t, so the roads were crisscrossed with orange extension cords as neighbors helped one another not lose a fridge full of groceries. Joanna said the whole thing turned into a huge block party where people grilled up everything they could before it spoiled and kids got massive bowls of melt-y ice cream. I bet when her children look back at the blackout, they’ll do so fondly. Up here, except for on one side of our fence, we’re separated by woods and are easily a couple of tenths of a mile from all our neighbors, so even if we knew anyone, we couldn’t find a cord long enough to tap into their generators.

While exchanging a couple of brief messages with my agent, I mention we’re out again and she’s all, “Did you move to the 1970s?”

However, the situation feels different this time, probably because I’m actively working to adjust my attitude. I’m coming up on a busy part of the year, so stealing a little break isn’t the worst thing ever. I’m learning that once in a while it’s nice to have a quick TV time-out and it feels like we’re camping. But we’re camping in a house with all our pets, my favorite antiques, [Zinc lion heads, I’m looking at you!] and flushable plumbing, so it’s all good.

The power doesn’t come back until midafternoon, thirty hours after it goes out. Honestly? Last night was fun! The sun set around eight forty-five p.m., so we had plenty of natural light. Then Fletch and I listened to talk radio and just hung out telling stories for a few hours before going to sleep. Because I’d soaked in the pool for so long, I lowered my core temperature and was actually chilly when I went to bed. We had such an adventure that I was a little disappointed when everything came back to life. I had at least two more days of good attitude left in me and I, dare I say it, found a way to enjoy the experience.

That is, except for the frogs.

When I let the dogs out this morning, I saw some stuff floating at the surface of the pool, so I grabbed the skimmer. Upon closer inspection, I realized they were frogs, a hundred mini-frogs, all clustered together! OMG! So adorable! Wee and grass-green with comically bulgy eyes! For a second, I considered running inside to grab my camera so I could document the find for CuteOverload.com. I mean, how often do you stumble upon a little froggy fraternity party?

Last summer, we found a couple of small amphibians swimming in the pool but we haven’t seen any since then. There’s something about the noise of the pumping system that keeps wildlife away. I guess with the system silenced, the Itty Bitty Froggy Committee assumed they’d found themselves an ocean! Last one in the pool’s a rotten toad!

I didn’t notice the problem at first. I assumed when my tiny new friends spotted the net coming at them, they’d go all Calaveras County Frog Jumping Competition on me, with teeny fern-colored bodies making spectacular leaps and bounds. It wasn’t until I got my first scoopful that I realized none of them were leaping.

Or bounding.

In fact, they weren’t moving at all.

My pool wasn’t full of dozens of happy mini-frogs, delighted at having found sweet new digs; rather, my pool was full of a hundred mini-frogs who met an untimely death.

Oh, the screaming that followed.

Fletch wandered outside then, asking, “Hey, what’s with all the shouting?” When I showed him, he paled and made the excuse that there was something urgent requiring his attention inside the house. If the predicted zombie war has anything to do with small, dead amphibians, Fletch isn’t going to be quite the warrior he envisions.

I tried to keep the hollering to a minimum as I scooped them out and chucked netful after netful towards the woods. In the middle of my gruesome task, I had to shuffle the dogs into the house.

“All finished?” he asked, looking relieved.

“Nope,” I replied. “Libby was snarfing up frog carcass as though cuisses de grenouilles were her new favorite dish.” That’s when Fletch decided he needed to go out for more ice.

Fifteen increasingly screamy minutes later, I successfully strained the tiny bodies out of the Dead Sea… or so I thought. That’s when I spotted the sole survivor, tucked away inside the hollow core of a fun-noodle like a small, web-footed Anne Frank hiding from the German Security Police, otherwise known as chlorinated water.

Gingerly, I liberated her orange foam life preserver from the water, placing it on the other side of the yard, and breathed a little sigh of relief as she hopped towards the wood line. Then I set up the hose to ripple the