bogeyandruby

Today our electrician Justin is coming over to update our electrical panel. We met him during an inconvenient and very expensive week of appliance deaths: first our dryer, soon followed by the television. When our dryer broke, something blew in our electrical panel, an issue beyond house repairs 101. 

Enter Justin who fixed the problem in one minute flat but told us that our 1964 electrical system was no longer capable of supporting our current (pun intended) electrical needs and that if we didn’t modernize it, our house could burn down. That was all I needed to hear to give him the go-ahead. 

I am a natural catastrophizer, addicted to the high of things working out despite my imaging the worse case scenario. My husband, on the other hand, is the polar opposite to me, never thinking (or planning for) beyond the present moment. He lives in a cozy bubble labeled: here and now, a lovely place to be, except for those times he runs out of gas on the highway.

If you were to ask me what my worst fears are I would list them as follows: being lifted up and away by a bunch of helium balloons, explosions (I blame this on my brother’s cap gun going off near my head when we were kids), the house on fire (I’ve already set my hair on fire), being hit by rubber bands (thanks again to darling brother), and receiving a shock of the electrical kind (I wear oven mitts to turn the light switches on and off during the dry, winter months). I also have a fear of lighting matches or lighters. I can manage those long-handled lighters, however, that click on, like a gun.

The electrician is here now and he’s just called my husband down to the basement. I am in full catastrophe mode as I write​ this, imagining an explosive withdrawal from my bank account or that we may have to dig a trough from the basement out into the garden to access some obscure wire. If not accessing it may cause a fire, I will have to give him the go-ahead. 

UPDATE: the bad news is that we cannot upgrade our electrical box sufficiently to plug in an e-car. For that kind of work, we would have to dig up the uni-stone patio just outside the basement window adjacent to the electrical box. Not a major catastrophe, but something to consider as we phase out gas-running cars. 

The good news is that NOT digging up the patio will not precipitate a neighborhood big bang.