Hotspur.us

I was in the homestretch of finishing Chad’s frock coat. To be honest, I was feeling pretty smug. The sleeves had gone in with little struggle – in both the coat and the lining – which I considered a miracle. Sleeves and I have a complicated relationship. We’re less frenemies, more nemeses.

There I was, pinning the coat for a final ironing. It looked good; like I knew what I was doing.

There was one last thing to be done. I needed to add the buttons. To be sure, this jacket called for a lot of buttons. I was going for the full complement of 4 small buttons and 26 large ones. Unfortunately, I was left to my own devices to figure out what “small” and “large” meant, since the directions were completely silent on the situation.

I went through my button box and came up with 4 small buttons that I considered appropriate. But try as I may, I could not muster 26 matching large buttons. Crap. I was getting desperate and even started mentally going over coats and jackets we had that might have been good temporary donors. Alas, we owned nothing with 26 gold  buttons.

As much as I hated the thought of it, I decided to run out at lunch and hit up a chain craft store for buttons. Strike One. Ok. The Evil Mart was just up the way, so that was my next stop. Strike Two. I was disgusted by the miserly offerings and getting twitchy. I decided to suck it up and drive to the other large chain craft store. Strike Freakin’ Three.

Panic started to set in. It was Tuesday afternoon. The jacket had to be ready to go Friday by 7:30 pm. I needed 26 large buttons and I needed them NOW. I mulled over driving either north or south to a proper SEWING craft store, but decided I would lose my mind if I did that and was still not able to find the buttons.

So I did what every panicked person does in 2017. I ordered from Amazon. They are due to arrive Thursday night.

On Wednesday, I found myself at a $1.00 store stalking the aisles for poster board, markers, ribbons and anything that would pass for wheels. All things that would eventually reveal themselves to be a Roman chariot for our biggest ferret, Sasquatch. (Just to clarify, not like a real functioning chariot, but a box made to look like a chariot.)

Why? Solid and legitimate question. Our ferret club has a yearly picnic. Picnics mean games…like the ferret chariot race. The rules are simple, put your ferret in a chariot and pull him across the finish line. The catch is, if your ferret jumps out, you must stop and put the ferret back in the chariot. The race is ridiculous. Ferrets leap out all over the place; chariots capsize! It is 60 seconds of gut-busting hilarity!

All you only really need an open topped box with some kind of rope to pull it. But what fun is that?  So I decided that Sasquatch needed a cool conveyance – a Jeep. No, a flipped over Jeep! That was in June. I was still mulling it over in July when I thought perhaps a Conestoga wagon pulled by my collection of Breyer horses would be amazing. I had a brief flirtation in early August with a red wagon, but that seemed dull. The horse bit stuck with me and I was sure by late August we were going with a Roman chariot. August passed into September. Labor Day happened. I worked on Lederhosen for Oktoberfest.

Suddenly on Wednesday, I realized two things:

1. The picnic was Sunday.
2. We were leaving Friday to camp and wouldn’t be home until Saturday evening.

Which is how on Wednesday after work I found myself clutching photos of Roman chariots, prowling the aisles of the local cheap stuff store.

Back to the refrigerator issue.

The problem appeared to be a wonky breaker. A short internet search and a trip to the nearby hardware super store, because at 8 pm the local place is wise enough to not be open, we had a new breaker in hand.

Swapping out procedure was simple. Turn off entire house. Remove questionable breaker. Replace with new breaker. Turn house back on. Test outlet. And…nothing.

Maybe it wasn’t the breaker. Maybe the outlet was bad. It was kind of gnarly. A brief inspection revealed what looked to be a single outlet. Single as in only one plug. These are things you don’t really notice when they are hidden behind giant appliances.

A hands and knees closer inspection led Chad to find that we had a regular outlet, someone had simply wallpapered over the top part. Wallpapered poorly.  And then calked it in place instead of using an outlet cover. Because of course they did.

Entire house back off, Chad scrunched himself into the refrigerator cubby working to free the outlet. As luck would have it, we had an extra brand new outlet hanging around. New outlet installed, I headed down to flip the breakers while Chad lay on the floor, ready to test the outlet when it came back online.

I had no sooner flipped the relevant breaker back on than I heard Chad very clearly shout “TURN IT OFF!” This was surprising, since he was not directly overhead and the basement door was shut. He may as well have been standing right beside me for the volume and clarify of his directive.  

“So…” I asked, returning to the kitchen and seeing him still in one piece on the floor.

“Flames.”

“Ah.”

“Electrician it is, then.”

Did the refrigerator light only come on if both doors were open? Three years of refrigerator ownership and you’d think I would know. I didn’t. I opened both doors. Still no light. Miffed that the fancy LED light had died an early death, I decided to ignore the issue until morning.

Saturday morning confirmed the light still did not work. But since the kitchen was flooded with daylight, it wasn’t much of a hardship. A gallon of milk is pretty easy to find when it’s on the door.
It occurred to me on Sunday morning as I stared blankly into the empty abyss, that the inside of the refrigerator did not seem to be very chilly. And then the lightbulb in my head went off…the entire thing wasn’t working!

Down to the basement to inspect the breaker boxes. And indeed, there were two unlabeled breakers thrown. That’s an easy fix. I flipped them back on and trudged back to the kitchen. The refrigerator was still not running.

Now, I’m not typically the kinda girl who is going to sit around and wait for the hubs to come home and save the day. But I’m also not big enough to pull the refrigerator away from the wall. I’m short, it’s big. I waited. And stopped looking in the refrigerator.

I’m embarrassed to say that instead of letting the hubs come home and not have to immediately deal with the unfolding chaos of this weekend, I met him at the door and gave him the low down. He easily moved the refrigerator and plugged it into another outlet. Hooray! It worked! That was fairly good news.
Back down to the basement I trudged, trusty flashlight in hand, to flip breakers one by one while he listened to the refrigerator, until we could figure out where the problem was. It took two rounds until we found the bad breaker, which was A. loose, B. unlabeled, and C. now on the list for repair.

Current kitchen configuration: heavy duty extension cord running across the countertop. It’s perfectly safe. I’m sure.