When The World Goes Black.

Today was GYMBOREE DAY!! (can't you just feel the energy in the air?) I packed my son into the car and headed out into the torrential down pour so that he could spend some good, quality time with his pal Gymbo The Clown.

It was raining so hard that some of the roads were quite flooded. I had to keep to the middle of the road and pray that I didn't hit one of the lake-sized potholes that are much easier to avoid when not covered in a layer of water. We got to Gymboree and made a mad dash for the doors. But, wait... what's this? Ezra? You want to hold the umbrella? Well, I don't know if that's such a... OK, OK... um, stop screaming. You want to hold it? Uhhh, Okay! Um, here you go! Keep it stea- AGGCK!

We were SOAKED through and through by the time we hit the doors. Sigh.

We played at Gymboree for about a half an hour. Right when Ezra had a ball poised above his head to throw in my direction, the power went out. I instinctively ducked. I still have no idea if I narrowly missed a basketball in the face.

There are NO windows in this gymboree, because it is in an old mall. So, when the power went out, it went COMPLETELY and TOTALLY BLACK. I took a picture:



And here's Ezra attempting to climb the slide in the dark:



And here's Ezra tripping on the corner of a mat:



And here's Ezra stealing a ball from another child:



HAHA, I kid. I was not actualy snapping pictures in the dark, I promise.

Some kids started screaming and crying while panicky mothers tried to locate them in the dark. Other kids thought it was the best thing that had ever happened to them and started running wildly- bumping into other kids or jungle gyms as they squealed. Every mom in the place was calling out their kid's name- trying to outshout the other moms so that their kids could hear them.

CHAOS, people. Utter CHAOS.

I finally found Ezra over by the jumpy trampoline thing (holding another ball over his head) (or maybe it was the same ball?) and I tried to keep him corralled as the employees searched for flashlights. They found a couple, and we all waited to see if the lights would come back on.

After about 10 minutes, I decided to leave, because, Gymboree? It just loses some of its 'magic' without electricity.

On the way home, the roads were even worse, and the stoplights were all out for about a 4 block radius from the mall. People here in Oklahoma don't seem to understand that when a stoplight goes out, all you need to do is calmly treat it as though it were a stop SIGN. I saw crazies barreling through the lights without looking - almost getting sideswiped by oncoming traffic. I saw others who stopped at the stoplight, but appeared to have no intentions of moving forward again until the LIGHT CAME BACK ON. Seriously. The people who were unfortunate enough to pull up behind them (namely:me) had to backup and go AROUND them in order to proceed. I wonder if they are still sitting there, all these hours later?

At the front of my neighborhood, there is a very large and deep drainage ditch. When I pulled into the neighborhood at 11:00 this morning, the drainage ditch was raging full and starting to spill out across the road.

That was 4 hours ago- and it has been raining HARD ever since.

I wonder if my newest neighborhood feature is a rowdy, dreggy MOAT?