Break Down

I think I mentioned that everything in the house is breaking down. If you have kept up with me at all, I have a few that have broken down in the last month: my guitar (the crack finally burst open with a vengeance), my ghetto oven (started getting an electrical smell), the laundry door (just broke off), the car (completely broke down and died), the iMac (biffed it and crashed), and various other little things here and there that keep just dying or breaking or just plain stop working.

Well, last night I was going to use my brand new oven for the second time ever and in addition to this, I was going to use the range. The oven would not heat, and the range would not heat. The power was on, but nothing worked. Great. I can believe this, I have pretty much prepared myself for anything lately because everything is breaking down, you know. I start to get afraid to press on buttons or plug things in. The other day we had the vacuum in and the outlet started smoking. No kidding. Now the house is going to burn down.

So I called the Professor right away----called him from the far depths of his book and lured him down with the words, "the oven's not working."

He marched down, slightly annoyed (I understand the pain, really I do), and turned off the circuit breaker. Turned it on. Nothing. He flipped some switches. Nothing. Nothing was working now. Not even power. He took the oven drawer out and messed with the plug. Power flickered here and there, but would turn off as quickly as it would turn on. Finally he moved some box back there or the plug in such a way that all was working like normal.

"Something seems to be wrong with the outlet," he said, "and now why is smoke coming out from under the oven?"

Sure enough, smoke was pouring out from under the oven. The outlet was burning, melting, smelling. We did the circuit breaker thing again and unplugged the oven. I got down there with an oven mitt. The outlet box was still smoking. Pretty soon it stopped.

I immediately put my head in my hands while leaning on the counter, and then grabbed a bottle of wine and opened it up.

The Professor scheduled for an electrician to come on Monday.

Did I mention that the Girl came down with chicken pox too? Yes, she has been vaccinated. She barely has it though, and because she has it she can't go anywhere---she missed her best friend's birthday party yesterday. To make her feel better, we went and got a movie and bought all the stuff to make deluxe sundaes. We even had whipped cream and cherries on top.

When I think that I can't handle anymore, I am reminded that I can take on just one more thing and then it all accumulates into more than I thought I could take----and pretty soon everything will break down but life will be fine, nothing really matters that much, and God is with us.