I love love love the house we live in. My husband diggs it too. But I’m honestly concerned about our electricity situation.
Our house is probably unsafe ~extension cords upon extension cords hooked up to adapters taped under the carpet taped to the outlet strung up the side of the entertainment center three-prong plugs going every which way with two prongers out of outlets that are more than sixty years old running amok underneath the house with the electrical orgies taking place in the other 3 apartments that are all hooked up together in one cosmic electrical…~ by somebody’s standards. The problem is whose standards to trust. I’d call the fire department, but when I think of the city government I’m reminded of certain individuals ~remember those cops from ‘Idiocracy’?~ who decided I was a threat to society three times in one month, to the tune of 260.00, one warning, and one session on the side of the road with two police cars and a dog.
Those people stick in my head right next to the memory of the day I showed up for my reckoning in the seat of justice and the first crime on the day’s docket was a citation on the Arby’s manager for letting his burglar alarm expire. ~strong message there? maybe we should wake up?~
If I call the fire department or the building inspector, somebody will go after the landlord. It’ll result in some kind of government bullshit for him, and I like him. Besides, they’re mostly full of shit, and I really like our house. It’s in a great downtown location. We’ve always had friends nearby, the place has character, and we’ve been very happy here. ~two lovely christmas trees~
Christmas was a riot. The day we got our Christmas tree ~3 weeks too late!~ I was in the Home Depot asking the lady for a male/male extension cord. Okay, so it was dumb. A monster was about to crawl out of my flesh and eat someone. I had spent the day stringing and re-stringing that Christmas tree and just found the female/male combination of extension cord outlets to be frustrating. ~the lady was very kind to me and hid her amusement well. it was funny. i was showing the christmas stress on my face she had been seeing all day. we both knew I was being unreasonable. in the realm of real human interaction it was fine, but i wonder if she’d pass a standardized review from the central bureaucracy at home depot?~
So she explained that once you plugged in the extension cord I was proposing, the prongs would be hot on the other end.
So death could happen.
Yeah, I think I knew that. Damn.
So we re-strung the lights about eight more times.
Christmas lights are down. We didn’t die.
Yesterday I was somewhat comforted by the fact that the new space heater I bought tripped a fuse. Okay, so I didn’t follow the instructions on the package completely, but those instructions are IMPOSSIBLE to follow in this house. ~loudly told them so while I was reading them. you want me to plug this heater into a plug that nothing plugs into besides the heater itself, into the socket all alone with no extension cord attached, but still able to sit the heater three feet away from anything flammable, not on carpet, not on a non-level surface in a place where it has a shot in hell of keeping me warm?~ There are no plugs in my house meeting their specifications. And it’s cold. It snowed last night. ~did I mention we don’t have central heat?~
I was even more comforted when a friend happened to be here working on the house and opened the breaker box for me outside in the dark and cold. ~that thing is hard to open, even harder to shut~ I was puzzled but glad that not everything in the house went out. The TV and alarm clock were on and the dryer was running, but the lights were out.
Maybe my trust in breaker boxes is misplaced, and I really am about to die. Who knows?
The point is someone does know, and that someone might not be a government official. So maybe I should hire an electrician?
I'm Taylor. This is my classroom. There used to be a "real" teacher behind this blog, but she nagged me all the time about not saying this and not saying that. ~all she ever did was type anyway, since my fingers are stuck together~ So I've taken over.
Yes, I'm an imitation Barbie knock-off doll. What of it? Barbie's got nothing on me! Let me take you to school.
Well, my family had a house burn down on us once due to an electrical fire–some hillbilly had wired the house and it was an ugly scene.
Secondly, on a separate occasion, my husband awoke one night under a blanket of flames. See, his blanket had slipped into his too-close space heater.
I’m guessing you’re one of those healthy, skinny chicks. As a good mid-westerner, I suggest you eat a fat sandwich and build up a little blubber layer, which serves you well in the cold. Which will turn out to be veeery uncomfortable once the global warming thing really takes full force. But then well, that’s just too far down the road for me to think!
(please read the humor in this…I’m not serious…except for the 2 fires mentioned, my comment has NO purpose)
In theory it is something that you could actually do yourself. Then again most everything is. I had the same situation in my last house, and my friend and I got on the internet and read up on how to do it. Depends on how likely/scared you are that you might mess up.
Or just call an electrician. If your landlord is cool he might consider letting you take some of the costs and deduct them out of the rent for a month or two?
Josh’s last blog post..optomism?
@Josh I’m terrified I will mess up. I should talk to the landlord about this.
@Ginger That is horrible. I’m sorry. I’m also even more scared now!
We have space heaters. They are plugged into extension cords. They are on the carpet. They are less than four feet away from furniture. Living on the edge is how we roll.
Olivia, Thanks for making me laugh about it!