Argh!: Episode 2 – The Bane of My Existence or Why Living Rural is So Much Fun

When we moved to our little patch of dirt almost six years ago, it was literally the middle of nowhere—undefined winding dirt road, very little concrete or asphalt, dark nights, ten miles to the nearest grocery store or gas station. Okay, so maybe not as middle of nowhere as some places, but still, it was more rural than anywhere I’ve ever lived, and the kids called it “our desert” because that’s all you could see from our front door. And we had an incredible view of the Superstition Mountains. I loved living out here, despite all the dirt. My only real gripe was we had frequent power and phone outages.

With the urbanization of our area, those outages have come less often. In exchange, we'll be losing our mountain view, we have a heat trap asphalt road running in front of our house (which, I have to admit, is kind of nice when it rains), a lot more traffic in front of our house, and we have street lights. No more clear, starry skies at night. :( So, with all I’ve had to give up, I get a little peeved when the power goes out.

Now, I know it’s expected once in a while, but ours just goes out for freak reasons now. There was the very frustrating incident last September, aka Argh! Episode 1, and then there was last night. At approximately 2 am, my world got very quiet, so of course, I woke up. I was dead asleep too. My husband said there was a pop and then the power went out. Great. This was sounding too familiar.

We looked outside and it appeared we were the only ones without power, and a/c—it had to be 90 degrees last night. Fortunately, due to the previous incident, I had the power company’s number programmed into my phone. After a quick call to them to report it and shutting down my computer, we went outside to investigate.

Just a little FYI: If you don’t have a battery backup for your computer, get one now. It will absorb the shock from a lightning strike and save your electronics. What? Lightning? Yeah. See Argh! Episode 1.

Anyway, everything looked okay on the power pole in front of our house, but upon closer inspection we discovered a barbecued critter lying in front of it. Though my morbid side is very tempted to post photos of the crispy critter, I know some of you are sensitive about that, so I will leave it off, along with the type of critter. But if you’re really interested, feel free to email me, abbyannis (at) earthlink (dot) net, and I’ll send them to you.

The power guy finally came out about 4 am, and we got our a/c back, so I could finally go back to sleep, only to get up again at 6 am to get the kids on the bus. Fun night. :)

Anyone else have a similar experience to share? Or anything else you want to share? Sorry, my question generator is still asleep. I’m going back to bed.