Monday, August 6, 2007

Not a happy camper

I was vacuuming. Okay, I know it was around midnight but I am not a day person. The chairs in the living room are pulled away from the windows so I could vacuum behind them - a small side table is sitting by the front door - there is a pile of laundry on my bed to fold. Then the power went out. Okay, the power went out in the front of the house, not the back. The front is where I live, it's where the bedrooms are, the only bathroom and the living room. The kitchen counts too because basically the front of the house constitutes the original layout of the house. Starting at the laundry room back - is the addition to the house. That's where my son has nested. It is basically a big family room and he has made it his own while I have made his original bedroom my bead room. But I digress.

So there is no power in the front of the house which means no air conditioning. We only have window units to begin with and they aren't so great but they are better than the outside air right now. It's not incredibly hot if you look at the numbers but it is crazy humid out there. So, there is power in the back of the house, ah ha! It means a fuse has blown.

I got a flashlight and went out to the garage because that is where the fuse box is. The garage is on the same circuit as the back of the house so I was able to get the door open. But - that is where my luck ran out. We have those old screw in kind of fuses, not those nice switches that are so easy to reset. This is an older house that was never updated, I don't own it I rent it, so those kinds of upgrades are definitely not something I am going to do. I took the flashlight and checked all the fuses but they all looked fine to me. To be sure, I unscrewed each one and removed it, replaced it with a new one, when there was no change I unscrewed each one and put the original back in. The only one I didn't do that with was the one that controls the back of the house because obviously that one is just fine.

Standing in the garage, in the dark and humidity, trying to change outdated hot to the touch fuses in the early morning hours when I know I have to get up in the morning is not my idea of a good time. The sweat was literally running down into my eyes. Still - I could not find anything wrong with any of the fuses.

So now what? I really hate to act like a girl about this, but you don't call the electric company if it's obviously something within your own house do you? Do you call your landlord and wake her up in the middle of the night? Not that I could find her phone number right now anyway. I am literally at a loss. So what do I do? Go to the one thing that is working for the moment, my laptop. It's on battery power so I will be turning it off soon, but I needed to rant!!!

This is the one type of situation where I wish I had a male partner of some sort, here full time. When something breaks or needs lifting or something like that, I wouldn't mind a bit of testosterone around the house. And I might add that this is also the time when I am cursing out the former boyfriend who talked me into this house when I was looking for a place - with promises of - we'll do this to it - we'll do that - uh - yeah. I do not like this house and I have not liked it from the beginning. But right now I don't have a whole lot of options.

So - I will have to figure this out in the morning when I can at least see where I left my GOOD glasses, not this pair I managed to grab by the lenses from an end table. Silly though, I don't want to turn off my computer. I go to bed with the TV on every night, with a sleep timer. Turning off my computer really makes it dark and well - boring! I guess I like to be entertained to sleep. But I have to turn it off for now.


Good night all - hope your night is better than mine!

5 comments:

  1. I know what you mean about wishing there was someone around to help. When our ac started leaking all over the hallway this weekend, I thought the same thing. It's not really that you want someone else to handle it, just someone to share the responsibility.

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  2. Well...I have a someone to do that kind of stuff, but we have reversed the traditional male and female roles of a marriage. He does the cooking, cleaning, laundry and I do the fixing and other "manly" things.

    I have no idea what to tell you to do that might fix things. I would call your landlord...I would have tried to call her last night especially since you tried to fix it yourself first.

    I hope you get it fixed and back into the partial AC soon. It was WAY too humid and sticky to sit outside last night, so I can sympathize with the heat thing.

    Good luck...you could take a road trip to Lincoln, NE...we have central air.

    ~Tonia

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  3. mahala - no, I really DO want someone to fix it! :)

    Tonia - my BF came over this morning and showed me some fuses I didn't know we had. :( It's fixed now. Yay!

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  4. I am so glad you got it fixed and you now have lights and window ac's. What a great BF you've got there!

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  5. Yea! Glad it's fixed. Nothin' worse than a sticky, humid day without a/c... trust me, I know... we're lookin' at 100 degrees + 1000% humidity for the rest of the week, and then some. Can you say "Heat Warning!"?!?!?!?

    Here's wishing you a cool night... with t.v. :D

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