Day 347 - The Kettle & The Power Outage

I'm not sure if I've mentioned it before, but my Mother is hard of hearing. This morning I woke up to the sound of the kettle whistling. (Our electric kettle broke & we haven't replaced it yet, so in the meantime, we're using an old school one that whistles on the stovetop when it's boiling) The kettle whistled for, I kid you not, 30 minutes. Yes, half an hour. I'm at one end of the house with the door closed, in peaceful slumber. I hear it right away - wide awake. How can you NOT hear it for 30 minutes?!?! 


After that lovely start to the day, I finally attempted to start catching up on the blog. Jaco & I sit in bed like a cute married couple, with our matching Macs & type & surf away. Aren't we cute? :oP 


We started watching some of The Office in the afternoon, with the intention of not watching any in the evening & actually going to bed early for once. We were in the middle of an episode when the power went off. Hmpf. Oh well. Guess we'll take the dogs for a walk. Jaco was a bit concerned about why the power was off, but I told him not to worry. Chances were someone severed the power line, a bird landed on the wire, a tree... it could be anything. I reassured him that it would be up & running in no time. 


We walked the dogs to the highway & back & threw the ball for Valentina. When we got back to the house, Mom asked us if we would give her a hand. Apparently Jim, the fellow who owns the ranch & is 86 years old, had switched off the power after he got tangled up in the wires & he needed our help to climb up a ladder & untangle the wires. Rrrrright.


We walked down to investigate. Oh my. He was trying to do something with his septic tank in his yard with the Farmhand. (A Farmhand is kind of like an old tractor that has a lift on the front end & 'claws' for picking up bales, etc.) When he backed into his yard the 'claws' were lowered. When he was finished in the yard, he drove out, not realizing the 'claws' were up. He somehow managed to entangle the power lines, snap two wires, pull over a power pole, knock the line off the insulator on his house & in all of that, he didn't electrocute himself. 


Needless to say, we were NOT touching a single wire. He called his friend, who is quite handy, but now needs a walker to get around, to come out & help him with the wires. Supposedly they taped the wires back together & they are on the ground now. Looks like we won't be walking the dogs to the barn anytime soon! 


In all of this, we found it quite humorous. Nobody got hurt, miraculously, and thinking about the entire situation, that in itself is funny. There were cables all over the place & it was CLEARLY NOT a job for amateurs! Jim was too 'thrifty' to call the power company to come & fix it. Thankfully our power is back on! When we got back to the house, Jim had left us a phone message. I've pieced it together with the photos. In case you can't understand him, he's saying: "Jim calling. I had to shut the power off." No doubt!


Have a safe night!
xxxxMJV&O

Just in case you couldn't see the wires clearly on the video...

Jaco assesses the damage 

 The cable comes from the barn to the pole on the ground to the Farmhand to the house to the main pole

 Pole on the ground!

 Wire from the barn to the pole

 From the pole to the Farmhand

Exposed wires! 

 From the house to the Farmhand

 WAY too many cables!

 Wrapped around the Farmhand & then some!

 1-800-DIAL-B4U-DRIVE!!!

 You need an expert!

Expert help arrives. (kind of)