Robbed!

I just love dramatic headlines like that, don't you?

On Tuesday morning at 3:30 AM, my youngest child suddenly began screaming and rushed into our bedroom, complaining loudly that it was dark. I guess he had had a nightmare, but after I had settled him down I went into the bathroom and noticed that the water was just trickling out instead of coming out with force, as it should have been at that hour because the power should have been on. Then I looked in the kitchen, where the indicator light is to show that city power is on, and sure enough, it was dark. At first I thought maybe the power had gone off, but no, the streetlights were still glowing and it looked as though all the neighbors had electricity.

I restrained myself enough not to call the electrician until later in the morning (though he has told us to call him any time of the day or night "like a doctor" - this guy does so much work for us that his kids recognize my voice on the phone, and he called us on Christmas Day to wish us a Merry Christmas). He came in the early afternoon and noticed immediately what the problem was. During the night someone had come and stolen our electricity counter and a length of our wire! This counter was one we had had for about a month, since the old one burned up at the beginning of February. (You may be surprised to hear it, but I spare you many of our electrical adventures.)

Since we're starting a holiday period, the likelihood of anyone coming out to do anything about this problem is even lower than usual - and it's usually pretty low anyway. But I called. I explained the problem to a very nice gentleman, and he asked a bunch of questions and took all my information, told me that we'd have to buy a bunch of cable because, of course, the electric company doesn't have any electrical cable, and then gave me another number to call where to this day nobody answers the phone.

So back to the electrician, who assures us that he could hook us up to the power without the counter, and we may end up going that route but we are hesitant to because we are likely to get in trouble with the electric company. Which, if you remember, is probably not going to do anything before Tuesday at the earliest, since everyone's already gearing up for the Easter break and Easter Monday is a holiday.

The generator that we bought new in the fall has been recalled and we are waiting (patiently) for a replacement, but last night my husband took the battery out of the car and got the generator running (of course the car doesn't run, but that's another problem for another time). So we were able to get a couple of hours of charge for our batteries and we had fans all night.

Today the electrician is moving the wiring inside the gate, and when the electric company provides us with a new counter, there will be a place all ready for it. Since this isn't in the street the way the other one was, we hope it won't get stolen again. Meanwhile we are also hoping not to spend our whole Easter break in the dark.