The Unexpected Hotel Adventure

Poor Dexter thought he would be going to Jump Zone on Tuesday morning but our plans unexpectedly changed.  At a little past 5pm on Monday, our power went out.  This was more than 24 hours after a crazy storm went through the area causing lots of other folks in the Chicago area to lose power.  During the 95 degree heat on Monday, as I was listening to stories of power outages on the radio, I felt bad for how many folks were probably sweltering in the weather, I was grateful that we had dodged the bullet with air conditioning in tact.  I would not have immediately noticed that our power went out had it not been for Dexter's "hollerer" (the baby-monitor) beeping due to losing its connection to its base.  It still took me a while to get what was really happening - I thought the hollerer was broken and told Dexy that Daddy would fix it when he got home.  It wasn't until I glanced at the digital clock to check on my timing for Dexter's bedtime routine that I realized we were screwed. I told Dexy that we were having a "no power adventure" and that we had to hurry up his bedtime routine so that we could read books by the sunlight. Dexter was curious about the electricity asking all sorts of interesting questions about wires, lights, and electricity. When he fell asleep, I was still hopeful the power would come back on momentarily.  This was not to be the case.

The next morning, we woke up sweaty and determined to find a cool (hoping for frigid, actually) place for us to spend the night (communications from Com Ed indicated power would be back July 4 or July 5). At Starbucks, Dexter, Daddy, and I looked for nearby, reasonably priced hotels that acccepted pets.  During all of this, Dexter excitedly told anybody who would listen, "We have no power! We are going to have a hotel adventure!" We all ended up cooling off at a Hampton Inn in a far south suburb. While Dexter managed to experience it as an adventure, Mommy was at her wits end, stuck in a tiny hotel room with a three year old and a nervous dog when daddy went to work.