Father’s Day started off well enough. I got up with the boys and we fixed J blueberry pancakes and bacon. In true King-of-the-Castle fashion, we served him in bed. We then went out to play in the kiddie pools in the backyard. I told J that this would be the day that Zillow.com was updating their satellite image of our house. The day where I’m sprawled out in the kiddie pool in the middle of our backyard. I think that might be pretty funny actually 🙂 J went kiteboarding after lunch while the kids and I rested.
Things started to go wrong around 4:30 PM…
The power went out at 4:30 PM. We have an enormous standby generator on the side of our house for just such occasions. The only problem was that it didn’t come on! It self-tests every darn Sunday for 15 minutes. It sounds like an airplane is idling in our yard. But when we really need it, it does not work!!! WTF?! Why do we have this thing if it doesn’t work when it’s supposed to? I called J on his cell phone but he was still out in the water. The kids and I sweat it out until 5:45 when he finally rolled into the driveway.
We had a Father’s Day party to attend at 6:00 PM so I was already annoyed that we were going to be late for that. When J got home he went to inspect the generator. This caused every male neighbor we have to descend on our house with curiosity in their eyes. They were all outside discussing the current power outage so when they saw J attempting to be handy, they decided to lend a helping hand or offer up advice. I really didn’t have time for a male pow-wow. I had to bake my darn appetizers for the party!
J ended up pulling his truck up to the generator and busting out the jumper cables. He was trying to jump start our house! What made it even more amusing was the fact that one set of jumper cables was too short, he had to link two sets together! All of his effort was for naught. The generator would not start up. I told him that we had to go to the party. We were so late. I loaded up our unprepared appetizers and put the boys in the car. As I was starting the car to get some AC on the children, J informed me that he had to jump in the shower. Ugh! We didn’t really have time for that, it was 6:30. I asked him why he couldn’t just slap on some deodorant and a shirt and be done with it. He said that sunscreen had dripped into his eyes and he had to flush it out. I couldn’t really argue with that… So, the kids and I sat in the running car in the driveway while J showered.
When we arrived at the party an hour late, I baked my appetizers and J went to toss his wings in some hot sauce. Luckily, J had breaded and baked his wings earlier that day. He decided to heat up the sauce before tossing the wings. He put a plastic cup of sauce in the microwave. The cup melted and the hot sauce flooded the inside. It was a sea of red in there! Poor J. He had such a crappy afternoon. The power outage, the burning sunscreen eyes and then the hot sauce fiasco.
The only good thing was that our power was restored by the time we returned home at 8:30. J was able to get the generator started finally. He said the battery had died and that the jumper cables that he used earlier didn’t make a good connection. He was able to get a good connection and get it working again. Now I just hope the battery holds the charge for future power outages!
Adventures of Four 