Wednesday, November 16, 2011

House Perspective

Today I started vacuuming the living room while the toaster oven was heating up my lunch in the dining room. It worked for a few minutes, and then suddenly the vacuum cleaner went silent. The air filter five feet away in our bedroom was still puffing away, so it took me a bit to figure out that the circuit had blown out... Yup, no light in the kitchen, bathroom or dining room.

Oh well, I thought. Last time, when I stupidly ran the microwave and toaster oven at the same time from the same outlet, the electricity returned to us in about 30 minutes, seemingly not connected to anything we actually did. The circuit will fix itself after a while, I figured.

An hour and a half later, the situation remains the same. Half the outlets in the living room still work, though, as do the ones in the bedroom. For this I am grateful.

And as I wander the house, frowning as I flick light switches and see no results, the thought occurs to me: I should be grateful that I can still heat water and cook things (thanks to our much-maligned gas stove). Yes, I am grateful for the gas stove/oven, and grateful that there is still running water, and grateful that normally there is electricity throughout the house, and grateful that there is a house at all.

Thank You.

2 comments:

sarawr said...

funny thing. early this morning i was making an omelet and the guy who comes to check how much electricity we use came, took apart something like a breaker switch and we lost power. but our stove is also gas so i thought, well... even if i'm eating it in the sort-of dark, at least i can finish making my breakfast. we don't have nearly as many problems as it sounds like you have, but thanks for the encouragement about keeping a good attitude and perspective :) hope things become more manageable on your end.

jfille said...

thanks :) it seems i have to wait for our downstairs neighbor to return and reset the breaker, so dinner's probably going to be candlelit tonight. hopefully none of the food in the fridge goes bad...