If It's Not One Room, It's Another.

If it’s not one room, it’s another.  I have talked before a bit about the fact that my house here has some quirks.  Some, of course, are easier to live with than others.  (I prefer the little lizards that make their way inside to the leaky shower stall, for example).  But for the most part, our house is live-able and I have very few complaints. 

Around Thanksgiving, we started having problems with our wiring.  It began with the hanging lamp over our dining room table.  It just stopped working; and it wasn’t a faulty light bulb.  We put up with this for a while.  But then in February, the other light in our dining room also stopped working, as did the outlet on that wall.  Illuminating the dining room became a process of bringing a lamp, cord stretched to the max to fit, on a table by the window…making the dining table dimly lit, at best. 

And then our fridge turned off.  As did the microwave, which uses the same outlet as the refrigerator.  This is where we drew the line and insisted the school come and fix the problem.  Though the refrigerator would turn back on at random, going 7 hours with no power made us nervous about losing our food. 

It took the school’s electricians 2 days to fix the wiring in the dining room.  In regards to the refrigerator, they found a mouse in the outlet (remember that mouse problem from January?), and told us we would just need to flip the breaker if the outlet went out again.  In the dining room, the fix was more extensive—and more effective. 

But the wiring in the kitchen still wasn’t right.  At random, certain outlets wouldn’t work.  It was like play roulette:  Will the toaster oven work this morning?  Or will it be the coffee maker?  Place your bets now!  Sometimes the main light wouldn’t turn on.  The wall light would turn on, but only stay on for about 5 minutes before it would start blinking and then go out.  Then, the main light and ceiling fan decided to simply…not shut off.  No matter how we flipped the switch or the breakers, the light and fan stayed on.  For three days.  (That’s how long it took to convince them at school that we really did need a visit from the electricians). 

This time, the electricians were at our house for nearly 4 hours.  When they left, they assured Jenni that the refrigerator will always stay on now.  To use the coffee maker, the main light must be on, or it won’t work.  (Our range hood has always worked the same way).  Also, for some reason they had to disable the outlet in the bathroom and move the light-switch.  On the plus side, we still have lights in the bathroom.  However, we no longer can use the fan, the dimmer switch, or the outlet.  Granted, it’s too hot and humid to straighten or dry one’s hair in the bathroom, so we never really used that outlet, but it was nice to know it was there.

We thought that was the extent of it. 

But when I went to bed that night I discovered that none of the outlets in my bedroom work. Awesome. 

I complained about this for about 2 days, before I finally put on my big girl pants, went in search of extension cords, and, by connecting 2 cords to my lamp, and plugging them in in the guest room, restored some light to my room.  I’m even getting used to relying on my cell phone as an alarm rather than my alarm clock and charging my phone and camera in other rooms of the house.

Still…my fingers are crossed that when I get back from the cruise (for which we leave today), electricity will be magically restored to my bedroom. 

But hopes are not actually high.