That Kind of a Day

It was that kind of a day yesterday.  We woke up to find that the power was "surging," with the lights dimming and brightening in a way which reminded me of the old poltergeist movies.   While it was a bit amusing to actually feel the fan in Paul's room switch from low to high and back again over and over, it wasn't fun to find that the refrigerator had quit cooling.  Between calling the power company,  going out for ice and coolers, and moving everything out of the fridge, the morning got off to a rocky start. 

As three Xcel Energy trucks arrived to fix the problem, the painter also arrived to finish painting the master bedroom closets and the trim in Paul's room.  While we were glad to see her and she is the nicest person to work with, it did mean more upheaval in an already chaotic day as we moved our clothes out of our closets, took Paul's karate trophies off his window sills, and walked around drop cloths and paint cans. 

Eventually the problem was identified; the line bringing power to our house was compromised by rubbing against our neighbors tree branches.  The crew dropped a new line into our house, whacked back the offending trees, and declared their work done.  Indeed the power seemed fine but the fridge was definitely not cooling.  Friends gave us a referral to a good repairman, but the earliest someone could come out was Friday.  

Given that our refrigerator is very old, we had already thought about replacing it.  The space for it in our kitchen is very small and past research had uncovered only a few models that would fit.  Now that the machine had quit altogether and an immediate repair was not in sight we got serious about buying something new.  We contacted the salesman who sold us our stove and she helped us find a model that would work only to realize that it was on back order and wouldn't be available until July 11! 

Meanwhile, the neighbors were arriving home from work to find their trees pruned and big piles of tree branches on their decks.  Apparently Xcel left no information behind so Ben took time to talk with each neighbor, explain what had happened, and offer his help in getting rid of the branches. 

We had previously talked about buying a small fridge to keep in the den and decided now was the perfect time to follow up on that idea.  Ben and Paul went off to Best Buy and came home with a large dorm-size fridge.  Once it chilled we moved much of the food from the coolers into it.  

One of the things we had in the coolers was a nice butterflied leg of lamb which we were going to grill up for dinner.  With everything else going on, the idea of actually cooking could have been the straw that broke the camel's back, but actually it turned out to be quite relaxing.  We had invited our good friends to help us inaugurate our new Weber gas grill and that's just what we did, grilling up asparagus as well as the lamb.   Sharing a great meal with good friends was a wonderfully pleasant way to end a chaotic day.