mama_kestrel

I really hope it can be calm for a bit.

In the last 24 hours:

J's fiancee's father N had a second stroke. (The first one was in late March.) She was visiting a friend in the next county overnight, so I ended up racing out, picking her up, and racing back to her dad's. He wouldn't leave if she wasn't there. Mind you, there's a two hour window to prevent damage following a stroke, and getting her ate an hour right there. (If I'd paid attention to the laws of Physics, it would have been an hour and a half. I don't have to, if I'm willing to spend the energy. Time-benders R Us.) He had also called his brother. Then he was so busy proving that he was still in charge, dammit, that he refused to leave the house for another 45 minutes, until he knew where all his important papers were. When we got to the hospital he wouldn't go in the door until he smoked one last cigarette. When the hospital security guard remonstrated with him, he blew smoke directly in her face. I nearly smacked him. He got verbally smacked, hard, today. It was interesting: he'd been arguing with his daughter and mother, but he didn't have a word to say in his own defense to me. And my future daughter-in-law has now seen what I look like in Full Courtroom Lawyer Mode. His mother's comment, when I was done? "I hope you were listening. She is absolutely right."

So we brought S's grandmother back here for dinner and a nice long visit. She and my mother are of an age, and are instant friends. I just listened to the stories while I assembled dinner. About the time I was getting ready to serve it, the internet went out. Reset the router, right? Um, no. Turns out the circuit breaker has flipped for half the upstairs. Okay, reset the circuit breaker, right? Um, no. Upstairs smells - reeks! - of burned insulation. I just last week found an electrician, and had his cell number. I called him. He agreed that it qualified as an emergency and bless him, he came out on Sunday night. He also told me that if the smell didn't dissipate quickly, or got stronger, to get out and call the fire department. Son J. was panicking and theorizing on source of trouble without either data or knowledge of household electrical systems to back it up, and being a total know-it-all who knew nothing. First I explained to him that we were not going to guess when we lacked the skills; we were leaving diagnostics to the experts. Then I gave him something useful to do: in the unlikely event that we did have to evacuate, I had him gather all the cats and get them into carriers. Talk about a meowlelujah chorus! Six cats can sing quite the opera. In the event, it turned out one of the fixtures the electrician was already going to be replacing had cracked insulation, which had shorted out and burned a bit. So he took the old one out of the ceiling, capped the wires, and made sure no current was running to it when the breaker was reset. He'll be back when he originally planned (day after tomorrow) to replace that fixture and quite possibly the box behind it. He was not impressed with whomever had installed it, probably in the mid-90s. And he is now expecting to not only replace half a dozen fixtures, but also all of their boxes.

I like this guy. When I thanked him for coming and said I was glad I'd called him, his response was "I'm glad you did too." Good people. He's like "whatever it is, don't worry, we'll get it taken care of."

Enough excitement, right? But wait, there's more! When the electrician went out to the garage to choose a step-ladder, we discovered a leak in the ceiling. Checking above it, it turns out that the air conditioner is leaking onto the floor in the upstairs utility closet. (We have two HVAC systems, one for the old part of the house and one for the upstairs addition.) It was new in December, so it's at least under warranty. But I have turned off the AC and opened windows, and the drip has stopped. So I get to call those folks in the morning. Unlikely the electrical problem, it's an annoyance rather than an emergency.

All of this in the space of 24 hours. Mama Kestrel fall down go boom now!