We escaped our unpowered, un-air-conditioned home for a day in baltimore’s inner harbor.

Why Baltimore? The main reason was that I had to make hospital rounds and see my patients. So, dad took the boys and walked from the hospital parking garage to the inner harbor, while I did my work. Once I’d finished, I dumped what I could at the car, limiting the contents of my purse to bare minimum (wallet, phone, Chapstick and car key), and I walked over to join them at the Maryland Science Center, a favorite place for us to learn and explore. They had already ridden the “dragon” paddle boats in the inner harbor, visited the U.S.S Comstellation (although apparently J threw a temper tantrum that aborted that visit). I met them at the science center and we played in the water, shot pool “noodles” out of a makeshift cannon, blasted off a air-pump powered rocket, and took in a planetarium show about the solar system. We then headed over to one of our favorite inexpensive-eats options – Noodles & Company – for a quick meal and hydration before our drive home.

We had been checking the PEPCO self-service app, and we’re heartened by the following:

Really? We’re not part of a reported outage? Could it be true that power was restored?

Not wanting to get too hopeful, we walked back, in blazing heat, to the car. And, then, the day took a significant shift in the wrong direction. Remember how I reduced my load down to bare essentials in my purse? Well, the last item – car key – was nowhere to be found! Did it fall out of my purse? Did it never make it into my purse? Boys were hot and cranky, we were hot and now getting crankier. We reviewed or options – cab? Train? Light rail to BWI and get super shuttle? That last seemed the simplest, so we hopped on the light rail at Camden yards (fortunately only 3 blocks back from the garage). And by the time we reached the airport, we figured out that it made more sense to rent a car that I can return in the morning, bringing our spare key to work.

So we are now in this clean, air-conditioned rental car, with two sleeping boys in the back, heading home to discover whether it’s another night in the basement for us (and digging deep in the closet for clean clothes), or restoration of civilization to our home.

Our fingers are crossed…