Friday, June 6, 2008

Silence is golden

I, however, would know nothing about this anymore. You see, I have tinnitus. I've done an amazing job of masking it and not letting it wreck my life. I have NO idea how I've done this as I've read about this for years and thought there could be nothing worse in the universe to suffer from. I mean they say the reason Vincent VanGogh cut his ear off was because he suffered from tinnitus. I don't know who 'they' are, but 'they' said it for sure! Anyway, I've done a fabby job of living with it I think. I keep a very loud fan on at night right next to my bed so it's that I hear and not the ringing. During the day there is sound everywhere and I'm able to ignore it for the most part. I just plain will not let it drive me insane, as face it, that's a darn short trip most days!!!

Tonight at approximately 8PM our power went out. More precisely, we had a brown out. I've never in my life experienced a brown out and had no idea what to do or how to deal with it. I finally noticed, over the ringing in my ears, that things were buzzing and should probably be unplugged. I'm sure the TV wasn't supposed to be making noises like some Namibian caught behind the set, but it was. The fridges were buzzing like swarms of bees and the furnace...oh my I hope I never hear the sound it was making again! The CO2 detector went off. I'm hoping it was because of the decreased power to it and not because the furnace malfunctioned and tried to gas us all to death. Anyway, got everything unplugged that was making noise and settled down in the chair to wait for it to turn back on so I could plug stuff back in. I mean we didn't want the food to spoil or anything! As we were sitting there, the brown out ended and the black out began. We had NO power at all now. Probably a much better state to be in actually. Finally decided it could be the middle of the night before it came back on and I was tired. I went to bed and turned on the bedroom light so if the power came back on, I would be blinded and spring forth from my bed to replug the stuff. That's when the cacophony began. Oh my you just don't realize how silent it gets when there's no electrical hum of anything at all around you. All I could hear was the shrill tone in my ear. I turned every which way to no avail. At one point I nearly had heart palpitations as I thought the ringing had spread to the other ear as well, but it turned out to be just the crickets and tree frogs. They were singing up a storm. Needless to say I couldn't get to sleep so was awake when the lights came on and blinded me!

Everything so far seems to be OK. The fridges are humming now instead of buzzing. The TV came on and the modem is obviously working. The dishwasher is running and the coffee pot is set for morning. I'm off to bed now with my fully operational turbo fan remote in hand. It is officially now my bestest friend in the world and I will appreciate it more now than I ever have before!!!

3 comments:

Daphne said...

Tinnitus sounds horrendous, and the power cut not much fun either. But what's a brown out?

Debby said...

We had partial power. The light in the fridge was on, but very dim. Not enough power to run the fridge. The clock on the stove worked, but not the one on the microwave. Things were blinking and humming as they were trying to power, but there wasn't enough coming into the house to do it. There wasn't enough power to run the TV but it kept trying to turn on and made a horrid clicking noise. I needed to go unplug everything as this is what burns out things...the trying to be powered when there isn't enough power to do it. A few of the lights would work, but they were very dim...was a weird situation that I've never experienced! Hope I never do again!

Daphne said...

I've never experienced anything like that. It sounds very bizarre and a bit creepy! In this house, built in 1896, the lights are on two circuits and if one goes all the rest of that circuit goes - I've become expert at negotiating the cellar steps in the dark to sort out the trip switch.