No Power

As I sit down to write this post, my head has started aching, just remembering this past week. Where to start? A week and a half ago, on Wednesday, we were in our kitchen eating breakfast, iced in on a snow day, when we heard a big boom followed by a crash. We looked out our window to see a large branch fall off our neighbors tree onto their house, bringing down our power line with it, as well as the piping and power meter from our house. Fortunately, however, we did not lose any power. It took almost 2 hours to get through to the power company, and the lady I talked to told us to keep people away from the downed line and try to use less electricity than normal. So all weekend, I avoided using the washer and dryer and any other major appliances just in case, because I really didn't know what the consequence might be. I know the power people were super busy this week, there were over 500,000 people in Kentucky without power and temperatures over the past week were down to 5 degrees more than once. It's been a bad week for a lot of people.

Monday morning, a guy from the electric company finally came to our door. He told us our power line was an immediate danger and that they were going to have to cut the line down immediately. Then, it would be our responsibility to find an electrician to fix our meter box and the wiring from our house up to our roof where it connects to the main electric line. We were a little upset by this, especially because the next couple of days were supposed to be really cold, and frankly, we didn't know an electrician or where to get the help we needed. This man wouldn't or couldn't answer any questions and all we could get from him, was that our power line was a danger to us and our neighbors, in his words "ma'am, thurs lots of people up a creek rot now, do ya want to burn yur house down or kill yur neighbur?" (after the line had been down for 5 days already). He said that he would sit in front of our house (even though the line was in the backyard and in the ally behind our house) and watch the line until a "sitter" could come. The sitter would watch the line until the power company could come cut the line down.

In the mean time, we were on the phone with our homeowners insurance and trying to find an electrician. The first electrician we found really scared us, he came by to look at the damage and gave us a story about how he would have to cut a 2 ft x 2 ft hole in the upstairs bedroom, build a brace between the studs in order to set the anchor into the wall. He said that this would have to be done to meet code and everything would have to be replaced. All we would have to do is "mud and repaint". All I could see when I talked to him were the $$$ signs. We thought it all sounded a bit extreme, so we asked our neighbor if he knew of any good electricians. His house is just like ours and he is a good handyman, but not an electrician. He did have a good referral, who turned out to do a great job, but he had 3 jobs ahead of us, so we were put on the waiting list.

This long metal pipe holds the power lines from our meter box to the connection point at the roof.

Monday night, at 6:18 pm, right at dusk, the power guys showed up. These guys were nice southern boys from Alabama, "I'm real sorry, ma'am, but were gonna have ta shut ya down now." I know they were just doing their jobs, but I was so frustrated. It was really cold last week and we didn't know how long it would be until we got our power back. We had to wait for an electrician to come and fix everything, get an inspector to come out and approve it, then wait for the power company to come back and reconnect the power, it was obviously going to be a few days. But despite the fact that they were turning off our power, these Alabama guys ended up being some of the angels who helped us out this week. Instead of cutting down the line, they were very kind and climbed up on our roof, tied the line up instead of cutting it down and put the anchor in, saving us money and time.

We decided to say in our house that night, since it was almost bedtime. Our house is 75 years old and even though much of it has been remodeled, it doesn't hold the heat very well. The first night, the temperatures dropped 20 degrees. Each day got colder and colder, and we couldn't stay there anymore. By Wednesday, the indoor temperature was 32 degrees and we could see our breath.

Nate trying to stay warm while we were waiting for the electricians. This was a hard week for him.

Remember that talk by Elder Holland during last October's General Conference - the one about angels around us - we have had so many angels helping us out this week. Some let us crash at their house, even at the last minute, other's fed us breakfast, dinner or let us come over to hang out and get warm. Other's came by to check on us and we had lots of phone calls to make sure we were OK. We definitely felt loved.

Friday morning, the electrician said we were the first ones on his list, so we dropped the kids off at school and came home to our cold house to wait. But when I walked into the house, I heard a terrible gushing water sound, like the bath tub was on full force. I fell apart, certain that our pipes had burst. We ran upstairs to see water gushing out of the handle in our shower. Luckily the water was all in the shower and we couldn't find any sign of water damage, but at that point we didn't know where the original damage was coming from and were worried about our pipes while everything was thawing. Our wonderful neighbor came over (another angel) and helped Jeremy figure out where the problem was. We were sooo lucky. A plastic piece had broken off inside the shower handle, it cost $30.00 to buy a replacement, but that seemed like nothing compared to what my imagination had come up with. Jeremy was able to fix the shower himself and the electricians finished their job by 3:00 pm. More good news - the electrician had been able to get a waiver for the inspection (which would have taken another day, putting us over the weekend). They called the power company for us and they arrived at the house within 5 minutes. 5 minutes later we were reconnected with power. It was another day full of tender mercies. The other little miracle we had, because it was so cold outside was we were able to keep a lot of our food in a cooler outside so it wouldn't spoil and we were fortunate that we really didn't lose anything from the fridge.

Since we have moved back into our house, the past 3 days have been 50 degrees or better and another week of warm weather is ahead of us. I am done with winter and anxiously awaiting the Spring. All things considered, I feel so blessed and I love my home more than ever!

My camera could not do this picture justice, but as the ice was melting off the trees, it looked like everything was covered in crystals. It glimmered and shimmered and it was so pretty.