Where to begin...

It has been a ridiculous week, and I'm thrilled that we're not having company for the weekend. At this point, I don't feel like cooking Easter Sunday dinner for anyone other than my husband and myself.

We had an electrician out here yesterday afternoon to check the circuit breaker box... to see why one of the water heaters tripped the breaker.  Turns out that the wires to that circuit were crimped way too tightly, which had started to burn the white rubber insulation around the wiring. And of course, that particular water heater wasn't one of the easy-access heaters... it was underneath the back stairs, which is accessible through a little trap-door in the pantry, which meant having to take shelves out of the pantry to get to the door. (Is anything ever easy in a hundred-year old house? And did they have to put so many bathroom in here when they renovated?)

When the electrician saw the damage done to the wiring, he said "Oh wow. Oh wow."  No exclamation points there because he didn't sound enthused at all.  If I had to describe those words of his, I'd say he was in total disbelief. When he crawled back out of that little door, he showed me the burnt wires and insulation and told me that it was only a matter of time when a fire would have started under those stairs. And who knows how far it would have spread before we knew about it... and what if we hadn't been home? Worse still, what if we had been home?

So... if we hadn't recently had the water heater problems, had the circuit breaker not tripped, had the plumbers not been here to install new heaters and suggest that I get an electrician in here to "check out that there breaker box yonder," who knows what would have happened.  This should teach me not to stress out about little things like replacing water heaters.... we could have ended up having to replace the entire house. (As my friend Frankie would have said: "Let's not put that thought too far out into the universe.)

Give me a blessed break with this house. I love this big old Victorian doll house but if anyone walked up to the door tomorrow and told me it was the house of their dreams and offered to buy it, I think I'd start packing while they started with the paperwork.

And... the orange cat......  friend C was in the kitchen this morning when the orange cat walked up to the porch and sat down on a chair to take a nap. She happened to look out of the back door, the orange cat saw her, and he hissed at her, jumped down from the chair, and ran off into the backyard. C was the one who was able to close the little door on the cat-carrier that morning a few weeks ago when she and I brought that cat to the next town so he could try his paw at lakeside living.  That blasted cat found his way back here, and on the 12th morning after his re-location, he was meowing at my back door. So I guess the orange cat now associates C with the drive to the Lake... and I would think that anytime he sees her, he's going to run out into the yard and get as far away from her as possible.

I can see it now.... I will be living in this big old hundred-year old house till I myself am a hundred years old, and that blasted orange cat will still be on the back porch ready to scratch the heck out of my legs if I get too close to his ill-mannered self.

Give me a blessed break.