Wire, Rats, & Rain

Friday morning when I was in the shower, the power went out. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me in the last 2 weeks. (We lose our water when the power goes out too since it is on a pump.) This time it sounded different than normal. I thought I heard sparks. Then the guy driving by out front campaigning for the Patriota political party turned of his recording and said over his loud speaker, "Be careful your power lines just fell, there is fire and sparks!" I though that was nice of him.

At first we thought maybe the neighbor's overgrown weeds pulled it down. The wires kept touching, sparking and bouncing around. All the neighbor kids came out to watch the show. I quickly called our dogs and got them in the house so that they wouldn't go check it out. We were very thankful they weren't in that side of the yard when it fell.

Jimmy called the power company and told them that a live wire was down and that we were without power. They said that they would come out between 1 and 48 hours to fix it. Last time we had a problem with our line (because they cut the wrong house) it took them 9 DAYS to come fix it. Our power goes off all of the time. During rainy season it's almost every day. The quality of the power lines just aren't good. I do appreciate the men trying to fix the problems though, in the middle of a storm even. Our poor service is due to what the service guys have to work with, not the men themselves.

So Jimmy was stuck at home waiting on the technicians to get there. No one ever comes to your house to fix something with all the tools and supplies they need, so we weren't going to risk it. If we missed this opportunity it could mean days without power. Anyway so there we were, all stuck in the house together... a little sweaty, but still a forced family day isn't all that bad!

It's hot without fans, but thankfully is started to rain.

Jonah and Silas got to cool off playing in the rain!

Another wonderful event of our day happened while I was sitting at the kitchen table. I had been painting a flag for the 4th of July when all of a sudden I saw a rat walk by me on its way to the dishwasher. And by walking I mean that it was moseying on by, like "Go ahead lady, what ya gonna do about it." These are some ornery rats!!! I hadn't seen a rat or rat droppings in over a week, so actually seeing one was disappointing, I had been hoping they were all gone.

In the afternoon I set up the boys' play hut.

That's the first time we done that since being back. They were thrilled.

José had given us some coconuts, so Jimmy drained a couple of those.

Later we had some pineapple/coco water smoothies. They were delicious!

Our poor doggies had to be tied up all day. They did not appreciate that.

At about 6PM the technicians showed up. They were the emergency response team, which meant they really only worked with the large power lines. They had come out since there was a line on the ground.

{There is a flat Stanley in this shot because of a project we are doing for a SS class in Japan}

They found out that our wire had burned up. None of us were sure why, but one guy said that it might have gotten too hot in the metal pipe where it comes out of our house, because of the sun. We aren't really thinking that is possible, but who knows.

They don't carry any house wire with them, so it looked like we were going to be stuck. Thankfully they were very nice and Jimmy was able to convince them to just rig something for now so that we could have power and then send the other guys later to fix it right. But we still didn't have any wire. One of the technicians had the idea to go and find a house that had had their electricity cut and we could use their wire and whenever they paid their bill the guys who would hook them back up carry wire with them, so they could replace it. So that is what they did. Jimmy had to go to the hardware store to borrow some power lines wire cutters and then the guys fixed us up.

It is definitely rigged! The lines are hanging twisted together at lower than shoulder height, but... we had power! And we are thankful Jimmy waited for them, or they would have just left. The guys that work on the smaller lines called and said that they would be by on Monday... that would have been 3 more days without power.

The technicians were really nice, even when Lucha chewed through her leash and showed up at the bottom of the ladder they were coming down! We appreciate them trying to make this work for us. They laughed since it was so late and said, "Well now you have light for when you sleep!"

CRAZY ITEM OF THE DAY: We found out how the rat got in. We replaced the windows in our kitchen with industrial screens and hopes that it would at least slow the rats down. We close the glass at night, but figured we were ok with the windows open in the day. Without the breeze you just melt. Anyway these jokers chewed through our screen in broad daylight! Like I said, ornery rats!