Yankee Drawl

Posted By jayna on June 24, 2008

This morning, I was in the kitchen scrambling up some eggs for the resident vacuum cleaner (the child eats two eggs, a whole banana, and half a bagel – I’ve never eaten that much for breakfast!), when I saw a power company truck pull up in front of the house. The sight of that truck brought such a feeling of deja vu, I couldn’t help but laugh at my paranoia.

Anyone want the story? Anyone? Anyone?

Good, because I’m going to tell it.

Long, long ago (three years, to be exact), the husband and I bought our first house. A lovely little fixer-upper in this great state of Geahh-gia. Which we bought sight unseen at an incredible price.

8 photos of the house, flurries of faxed paperwork and a self led tour the day before closing. We were certifiably insane. And the thousands of dollars spent renovating proves it. (Though, we did walk away with a hefty profit).

The first week, we met out neighbors, Brick and Rocky. Both of whom enjoyed racing up and down the fence line whenever I was outside, and as a rare treat, would dig underneath the fence into our backyard and scare the shit out of me. They were owned by a very large, non-English speaking (save for the 9 year old) family, that had lots of parties and smoked lots of weed. Copious amounts of weed. They were a common denominator of our neighborhood, edged on one side by the retired couple down the street, and on the other by the actual drug dealers up the street.

So, imagine our surprise, when during the second week of home ownership, we were the ones to meet the police.

The husband was leaving in three days for Iraq. We were scrambling to get the house to a state of livable before I had no one to do the heavy lifting. All day we had been working inside, and it had been on and off storming outside. Around 4pm, the Geahh-gia Power truck pulled up to the pole in between our house and the neighbors. I was on the front porch, on a step stool, changing the front light, heavily armed with pliers, screwdrivers and a lightbulb.

The truck just sat there. At first, we discussed that maybe he was there because of the storms. Then the husband wondered if he had blown something bigger than just the main house fuse when replacing the kitchen light (whoever wired that house must have gotten something real good from the neighbors, because it was scarily screwed up). So, he headed out front to ask the driver what was up.

The response was that he was there to turn off the power. Being idiots ourselves, we assumed it had something to do with the storms and something needed to be fixed. And, we kept on working on the house, finally finishing the front porch light.

20 minutes later, four police cars come flying up in our yard and officers are swarming up to our house. I graciously let them in, they ask us if we have any weapons, we say not out, but in the closet. They ask if we’ve had any weapons outside recently. We look at them like they’re crazy and say no. They tell us that the pansy assed Geahh-gia power guy called and said we were threatening him with a gun.

Yes, folks, genius there honestly though we were waving around a gun at him, when we were up on step stools, using screwdrivers and pliers to change the light. And, he called the police on us. Welcome to the neighborhood.

In the end, we found out that he really was there to shut off our power, because the other genius I talked to at Geahh-gia Power never transferred it into our name. And, of course, it was now 5pm on a Friday. We got the power back on, along with some major ass kissing and apologies, the day before the husband left.

And that is why “What now?” constantly pops into my head when the power truck pulls up. Even when he’s just there to change the box cover, I make sure to stay inside . . . and hide the pliers.

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