When it rains it pours

The saying "when it rains it pours" is very common, yes. But I never realized its true significance until this past week. To begin the week, my gerbil Reepicheep (named after the Chronicles of Narnia) died of old age, which was quite sad. Then the next day, Wednesday, at around 10:30 in the morning, a switch in the circuit board in my house broke and we lost electricity! Of course, I have lived without electricity before, but I have never had to go without it in my own house for more than about thirty minutes. Before I knew it, I was working at the library to get internet and using candles for light whenever I was at home. To make matters worse, the handyman of my house, my dad, was out of town and wasn't coming home until Thursday night. Also, that Wednesday night was the coldest night since the beginning of this winter and we didn't have any heat since the electricity was down. When my dad finally got home the following night, we had been living without electricity for more than twenty-four hours; he came home to a freezing cold house and he also had happened to lose one of his suitcases at the airport, which was quite frustrating as well. He began to work on fixing it as soon as possible, and unfortunately enough that involved removing the entire circuit board and replacing it. If things couldn't get worse, he was parked in the Home Depot parking lot to get supplies to fix the circuit board on Friday and when he tried to start the car to leave, he realized that the starter in the engine had stopped working! So, not only did we have a gerbil death, a cold dark house, and lost luggage, but also a broken down car! Thankfully, my dad is virtually a jock of all trades and after a long day of working on the circuit board, the lights came on (and I've never been happier to switch on a light). The following day, Saturday, he was able to fix the car and a person from the airport also found his luggage and returned it to us. Although I'm still recovering a little bit and catching up on the schoolwork that I didn't get to do because it was saved on an electronic storage device, I am glad that it happened. Why? Because I learned through the whole thing how much I have to be thankful for. How else would I have realized how blessed I am to have electric lighting and heat and a functional microwave? Without this crazy experience, I would still take it for granted.