Random Thought for Thursday 8/20/15

[Tonight ... the 10th entry into the occasional series called 'Super-short sTROYies' ...]

CATASTROPHIZE MUCH?

4:51am:  AWAKEN to the sound of silence, which shouldn't be as the overhead fan is to be rotating, and the AC is to be cycling, and the stand up fan is to be blowing.

4:52am:  CONCLUDE that the power is out -- not in an "oh poor fuse had too much stress" kind of way, but in a "these are the type of blackouts about which they make documentaries years later".

4:53am:  CONSIDER that the utility company recently called to warn residents of the fact that e coli might have been in the water and SPECULATE that maybe it's e coli that has gotten into the electricity instead.

4:55am:  DETERMINE that, after trying for two whole minutes, it is too hot and too quiet now to stay asleep.

5:00am:  SIT anxiously on the couch, wondering if the looting of the 'hood or the rising of the sun will come first.

5:01am:  CONFIRM that the baseball bat is still hidden by the front door and that the butcher block full of knives is within arm's reach of the back door ... seeing as how the fancy alarm runs off of electricity, which is no longer available.

5:02am:  REALIZE that others might have guns for this type of situation, but that I shouldn't, because I'm the type of person who would enjoy shooting at the ground near the feet of strangers just to make them dance.

5:04am:  WONDER how best to re-train the puppies to quit being so darn cute and friendly now that the apocalypse is nigh.

5:06am:  RECALL that half the 'hood is Creole, and REGRET that neither my high school nor my college offered that as a foreign language option, leaving me unprepared for what may now be my final hours.

5:10am:  REMEMBER that I could still access Facebook from my phone and DEBATE whether I owed the social world an announcement that it was the beginning of the end of times.

5:13am:  MARVEL at how the quality of my life was now equal to the duration of my cell phone battery.

5:20am:  GRAB the new flashlight from the hurricane expo and jot all of this down so that my last thoughts would be captured for posterity.

5:27am:  AWAKEN (again) from having dozed off, to the sounds of beeps and whirrs and whistles of all of the appliances and electronic equipment coming back to life.

5:30am:  CLIMB back into bed, making a mental note to see what degree of catastrophizing is normal ... if any at all.

THE OTHER NINE ENTRIES:
http://www.capcognition.blogspot.com/search/label/Series%3A%20Super-short%20sTROYies

A DISORDER?  WHY NOT JUST AN ECCENTRICITY?:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/in-practice/201301/what-is-catastrophizing-cognitive-distortions

A MORE "RATIONAL" APPROACH:
http://www.redcross.org/prepare/disaster/power-outage