Man of the house leaves at 11 a.m. to “go over to the shore to see what’s going on” and doesn’t return until 1 p.m. when he appears at the back door with an odd (odder than usual) look on his face and starts shaking sawdust out of his socks. As he comes into the mudroom he says, “well you won’t believe what just happened” which is punctuated with a loud crack and flashing of various lights in the house.
He starts flicking light switches while explaining that he decided to cut down some dead trees near the driveway and even though he notched it properly, leaned it correctly and left one side attached… the evergreen bounced off a big maple and with slow motion circles crashed into the power pole with our meter, the cable and phone lines attached ripping the power line off and apparently…causing the line to short circuit.
As the man of the hour is on the phone with the NS Power damage to equipment line I’m asking, “what is that loud humming sound in the mudroom and why is there smoke coming out of the oven?” Now as some of you of the opposite gender may be able to attest to (and please excuse this sexist generalization) those with a Y chromosome often have difficulty multi-tasking, meaning he is completely ignoring me and when he gets off the phone and I finally convince him of the situation he throws the main power switch in the panel. When I inquire as to whether NSP is coming shortly he says “oh I told her at the call center it was okay, I’ll have to call back”
This he does before he goes in search of the brother-in-law electrician as the power crew have to a certified electrician present to reconnect the power again. The electrician goes in search of supplies to reconnect and arrives shortly before the NSP crew. The truck with cherry picker blocks the driveway exit for the cork borrower so we have a visit as we watch the progress.
By 4 p.m. the power is reconnected, tested and we do a survey of appliances/electronics where it seems that the only casualties are the wall oven (or at least the computer board) the transformer for the doorbells and the cordless phone (which was ill if not terminal anyway) so certainly better than it could’ve been. And since the deductible on the insurance policy is $1000 we would’ve had to lose more than the oven to make a claim a reasonable possibility. The scenarios were no power for several days, all the appliances fried etc. so we are simply without the oven for a bit. And of course the cable is non functioning, which on the day of the Daytona 500 broadcast, was being treated as equal to the water pump by the armchair race fan as he glumly listened to the progress on the Sirius radio. Mind you it will depend on what the NSP decides is a reasonable fee to charge for a Sunday reconnect due to defective silviculture practices before we are really in the clear.
So the supper invite to daughter # 1 was retracted and the request to shower at a friend’s place was also withdrawn. I managed to get supper together on the stovetop/microwave and the remainder of my chores done which had been postponed in the excitement. One positive was that I didn’t have time to grieve about returning to work in the a.m. as it’s almost a relief. And no I don't make this stuff up to have something to write about, that would be fiction this is definitely a realilty show. I'm thinking that retirement with this life partner sure wouldn't be boring would it?
