August 21 letter

August 21, 2006

Sigh. Okay, let me get this out and then I shall turn to more interesting stories. Today has been one of those Murphy days. Woke up this am with a list of stuff to do: call and cancel my doctor’s appointment (Tom has a late meeting and won’t be home in time to take care of the kids), call and make an appointment to get the car in (Loud sounds indicating possible problems with the wheel barring – just recently replaced and the idiot battery light came on last night), call the roofer to let him know that the house painters were arriving this am at 8am. Choose the colors of paint when the painters arrive. Go feed, water and generally care for my friend’s dog and cats (they are on vacation until day before Labor Day). Go Grocery shopping. Get library books returned. Pick up medications. So first thing this morning, I got up, put away dishes, set some clothes to wash, called and canceled the doctor’s appointment, called and arranged to drop the car off tomorrow am – when the mechanic would have a loaner that we could use, and got the boys dressed so that we could go take care of the animals. After loading the boys and my Mother into the car, we headed toward four corners – Jason was hungry so I figured I would feed him an 8 grain roll from Starbucks. Just as we got to the intersection, there was an explosive sound on the back right side of the car. Shite! Pulled into the gas station that was right there thinking that maybe the back tire had blown. It was worse. One of the long straps on Xander’s carseat had trailed out of the door and gotten wrapped around the wheel. The explosive sound was the strap coming loose. Thank the gods that it didn’t pull him and the seat out of the car! Oh, heavens. My heart just about stopped when I realized… oh man. I am still shaking with that. In one sense, though, it made everything which came afterwards anti-climactic. Anyway, got the strap IN the car and went on to Starbucks. While we were at Starbucks, I decided that I was REALLY uncomfortable with how low the battery indicator was and so I decided to stop at the mechanic’s on the way to taking care of the animals. We pulled in and I went and asked how long it would take to charge the battery. The gentleman there suggested that it would be better to take 10 minutes to check the alternator – and that it would be wise to do that because if the alternator was not working then a charge on the battery wouldn’t be of much use. So I brought the boys and Mom in and she read the newspaper while they played and I waited. Then the bad news. The car had died when they tried to start it. The alternator was definitely dead. I explained the urgency of the situation with the dog (He’d been inside all night) and they very kindly offered to have us driven all of us over there, wait while I took care of the animals then have us taken home. And that is what we did – although there was a hairy moment when the alarm at Andrea’s went off and I couldn’t remember the code to turn it off. I had visions of the police descending on the house en-mass and me with my mother and two boys… Not the usual house breakers. (grin). At any rate, Andrea was, as usual, prepared. She had left a type written sheet of instructions on the table and on that list was the code. Thank heavens! So I fed the dog and checked the cats while Mom read and the boys played in the back yard. Then the lady from Motorplex drove us home. Almost immediately after she left I realized that I had given my keys – all of them – to the mechanic! I called. They said they would send someone over with the keys. So while we waited (Mom read and the boys played in the back yard), I cleaned up the yard some – putting things out of the way to make things easier on the painters. Once the young lady from Motor plex arrived with the keys, I went into the house to begin making lunch. Just three minutes later, the power went out. WHAT! I went outside, initially to see if somehow the painters had inadvertently turned it off but on my way out the door I noticed the power truck across the road. I asked what was happening and the belligerent, beefy man in the red shirt snarled ‘It’s a planned outage. PSE sent you notices in the mail!’ I responded, ‘No. I look at my mail every day and I never received any such notice.’ A neighbor from down the street concurred and he snarled a bit more before I retreated into the house. Only moments later, my next door neighbor, Mary Ann, showed up. “What is going on?” she asked in distress “I was just starting my laundry – I only have two days to get ready for our trip – and the power went out.” I told her what I had been told and she noted that she had not been notified either. We agreed that she should go and try calling PSE – I could not because I have cordless phones and they don’t work when the power is out (My cell charge was almost dead anyway and I needed it for when Motorplex called.). After a bit I decided ‘What the hey’ and called. I was transferred to the ‘customer service representative’ – and got his answering machine! So I left a seriously incoherent message on his line and hung up. Then I called for pizza. Boys were thrilled, of course. While we were eating, Mary Ann showed up. She had succeeded where I had failed and had talked to a supervisor. The super had told her that there had been a planned outage – for four houses that were already without power – but that when they got into the system, they discovered a larger problem. ‘We didn’t have time to notify everyone.’ As it was 292 house were affected by the ‘planned/unplanned’ outage. When someone from PSE called me back and tried to give me the site super’s cell number I allowed as how I thought that it was probably the site super who had been being so rude to everyone and that someone ought to inform him that the people asking him what was going on honestly DID NOT KNOW and had not been advised of it. She said she would talk to him. Then I spoke with Tom and he said that he had told them that he was lodging a formal complaint as their action (not notifying everyone in advance) was illegal. Meanwhile the power, miraculously, came back on – it had been that they were telling us it wouldn’t be on until 3 pm at the earliest. Thank heavens. So now we are just waiting to get word on the car…