Blue Ribbon spread is the best!
That's what Greg shot up in bed last night, at 4 am, to tell me. Ahhh it's been so long since his last bit of sleep talking, I was almost beginning to miss it.
Turns out that our whole house nearly burned down. OK, perhaps that's a bit dramatic, but it could have happened. We lost power again yesterday, but in time to get an electrician to come out. Apparently, the master circuit breaker had actually, over time, melted into a knob of...melted circuit breaker. It could have blown at any time; I guess we were lucky that it decided to shut everything down instead of light everything up. I always have a hard time wrapping my head around things like "your house and family could have gone up in a blaze of enormous proportions," so I'll just leave it at that.
My back is feeling marginally better today in that I can walk, if not waltz. Maia had an extremely good time this morning at our expense, pointing out non-existent dodos and pretending to be a broken robot, and basically throwing back at us all of the little tricks we play on her - with her demonically cute "haHA" face on the entire time. I think she's maybe growing into the "fun" part of this age; I hope so.
O Power, how we love you.
Our power went out last night around 6:30, just as Maia was soaking in her bath and yelling that she needed to poop. Greg was at class until 8:00, so I yanked her out, plopped her on the potty, ran around grabbing as many candles as I could while it was still twilight, then got Maia dried and dressed in her PJs and went downstairs.
I called CL&P, not a wide area issue - nobody else has called in - nor a billing issue, as I'd just made a payment the day before. I can't tell if any neighbors are affected, so I throw on flip flops and pick up Maia and start walking around the neighborhood until I see that a couple houses down, they have power. Back to our house, I'm carrying Maia around the yard to see if any of our housemates have power, and I see that one does, but neither are home.
Back inside, it's getting quite dark, and of course the flashlight is nowhere to be found. I grab a big candle and a spider-fighting ping pong paddle and head down into our basement - you know, the enormous dirt floor cobwebby SCARIEST BASEMENT EVER that even the Comcast guy won't go into? - and head all the way to the back to check all the breakers. Maia is yelling "STILL NO LIGHTS MOM" and "I CAN'T SEE YOU" at the top of her lungs so I make my way back determining that nothing was working and I can't see my own feet. I hear our neighbor come home, drop off Maia with her, and head back down to call CL&P again, who tells me I have to wait for a dispatcher. At this point I'm pulling the "I'm five months pregnant home alone with a three year old so could you please just check the status of my ticket" card but basically they're telling me I'm SOL.
Anyhow, back and forth I go between our place and Cathy's place. Greg comes home, and checks the main circuit and the meters outside - nothing. CL&P actually sends a truck over - I was amazed, because I was composing nasty notes in my head already - and they check the basement and the meter as well. There is current flowing, so the problem lies with the house's electrical.
Greg's Uncle Butch comes over, and together they head down to the basement again. Turns out there is a faulty breaker somewhere in the system. We get one room going, Maia blows out the candles, we have to shut it all down again, I relight the candles. Finally around 9:30, they find the breaker, remove it, and get everything up and running again. We get Maia into bed, and Greg and I settle down to our usual, "how was your day hahahahaha" chat. I decide to get to bed early, stand up, and realize that I really, REALLY can't walk; something evil has happened to my sciatic nerve. I couldn't even lean on Greg to get up the stairs, I had to haul myself up backwards, on my butt. It's feeling better today, but something...is...lurking.
