Have you ever been without power for any length of time? In a total electric house, it's a real pain.
Saturday: I'm out shopping, BY MYSELF!!! Aah, the glory of walking through a store without the constant stream of, "Don't touch that." "Put your feet down." "Pickle don't tear the tags off." etc. pouring out of my mouth. Priceless.
Pickle and My Man are at home hanging out. My Man decides to start boiling down his javelina skull. (At least now it's out of my fridge!) Then he remembers a vent he needs to fix on the roof. While on the roof figuring out what he needs to fix the vent, My Man notices a little gap where the electrical conduit has shrank and is not actually inside the junction box that leads to our panel box of circuit breakers anymore. "Aha! He thinks, this may be why we've had some trouble with a couple breakers tripping since the rain. I'll just fix this too."
Off to the hardware store they go. In the meantime, some friends have called him to see if we want to go out to dinner. He, thankfully, accepted. By the time I got home, all the wires were dangling out of the pipe at the roof line like Medusa's hair. Since I really don't like electrical stuff, you can imagine my despair. My Man assures me it's no problem. He just needs to glue in the new piece of conduit, re-run the wires and attach them to their appropriate breakers. Sure, no problem. I'll just get my toenail polish and sit outside in the dusk to paint my toes since it's dark inside!!!
Insert live action: Pickle, "Eat, eat. Hungawee. Eat, eat." Translation, if I don't go feed her now, she'll start eating the dog food she's been playing in. The two-day drama continues . . .
. . . full bellies and a sleeping baby sure do make this mamma happy! Now, where were we?
Oh, yes. The toes. Absolutely the worst french pedicure I've ever been responsible for. Oh, well. better than chipped red polish, I guess.
By 7:00 when we needed to leave, he had reconnected the outside freezer, the fridge, Pickle's room and the living room. (Hey, the man needs his TV and I need Pickle's monitor!)
After dinner and ice cream, we headed straight to bed. He figured he'd just reconnect the hot water heater early, we'd go to church and finish the rest in the afternoon.
The best laid plans, right? At 3:30 the monitor woke me up with incessant beeping. I thought the battery was low (we had no power in our room) so I switched it with the other, fully charged monitor and just got more beeping. So I stumbled through the dark house to find out what was happening on Pickle's end. Nothing. That's what was happening. Absolutely no power. I checked the other two rooms that should have had power. Nope. Woke My Man to tell him the glorious news. He just rolled over and said he'd fix it in the morning.
I laid back down to visions of a slow smoldering fire in the panel box and a horrible pit in my stomach. After about thirty minutes of self torture, I got up went outside and saw absolutely no fire, smoke or smoldering embers. I went back to sleep.
Sunday: The hot water heater wires were sparking, which caused the main house breaker to trip. This was really bad news because I wanted a shower!!! Lowe's was calling our names again. Church was forgone to try to prevent the utter destruction of our cute little house by electrical fire. After two trips to the hardware store and a quick lunch at our favorite bagel shop (actually, it's the only bagel shop within 40 miles) we finally got down to the business of reconnecting all those pesky wires.
I use the term we here VERY loosely. I actually planted a new tomato plant in my straw bale garden, planted giant sunflower seeds along the fence line, lugged ten bags of compost, a new drop spreader, large bag of grass seed, the most adorable little rake for Pickle and a bunch of bamboo plant stakes in from the truck. Lowe's garden center likes it when we have to buy home repair stuff because I can't resist at least a cart load of stuff for the yard. Since I'm already there and all.
By the time I'd done all that and toted Pickle around the yard in her wagon for hours and hours My Man had the panel box all reconnected and organized and he even got the vent fixed!
All I can say is that our dinner of beef patties, hominy and fried taters and gravy cooked on my electric stove was the best meal I've had in a long time.
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