Getting Charged Up

Pioneer woman. Rosie the Riveter. General Electrician.

If this were a segment of "Sesame Street," those three terms might beg the implied question: "One of these things is not like the others." But, aha, they are all alike - each term refers to women who found they had new skills and new strengths previously undiscovered. The last term refers to me.

It has become an axiom of life on this farm that nothing goes wrong as long as my husband is home. Let him be away on business, or in Alaska to be with our daughter, and all hell breaks loose. That happened, again, with wretched regularity, last month when my husband was away on a week-long business trip.

We have a tankless water heater, which has worked perfectly fine in the year and a half since it was installed. Then, without knowing why, we were without hot water. We waited three days for a plumber to finally show up, only to discover that one of the internal breakers had tripped and needed to be reset. Aaaahhh, the joys of running hot water.

But not for long.

After a long work day and an hour's worth of farm chores in this blistering heat we have been experiencing, I looked forward to a relaxing and cleansing shower before I sat down to dinner. It was not to be - no hot water.

We will not discuss my reaction here, as I like to convey the image of that of a person of faith - which carries with it the implication that I have a fairly clean vocabulary. Let that implication stand.

I had plenty of opportunity to practice my 'clean' vocabulary after I got my husband's voice mail, and not my actual husband, on the phone. Fortunately, he called me back pretty quickly, and he coached me on how to fix the problem: turn off the breakers; take off the cover to the water heater (the unit is a rectangular box mounted on a wall), and look for a little switch that resembles the top of a retractable ballpoint pen. I followed the instructions, pushed down the offending button, and voila!, hot water. A sense of accomplishment, and, finally, my shower.

However, you will note above that I said, all hell breaks loose when my husband is gone, so one little household maintenance item was not enough.

The next evening, I was getting ready to ride my bicycle, when I remembered that I needed to refill my water bottle. The electric fencer that keeps the wires charged to keep the cattle in the pasture, and the predators out of it, is situated near the water pump. As I leaned over to turn on the spigot, I noticed the distinct absence of the clicking sound indicating that the fencer is working.

I double checked the plug, changed out the extension cord to see if the one in use had gone bad, and realized that the fencer had failed. Fortunately, there was a spare in the storage building. I went in the house to get the safety ladder, and then, after disconnecting the plug and turning off the appropriate breaker, I studied how the mounted fencer was wired. I proceeded to disconnect the wires, and for the time ever, used a power screw driver to remove the mounting screws.

The real challenge was to hold the replacement fencer and screws in place simultaneously while I tightened the screws. The cattle, fascinated by my movements, stood in a group by the wire and watched me, as if I were their scheduled nightly entertainment. I figured that if I could keep them entertained, I wouldn't need to replace the fencer.....

A thunderstorm was coming, and the lightning and thunder were too close for comfort. I was not interested in having a "shocking experience." I finally secured the fencer, connected the wires, plugged it in, and turned the breaker back on. I checked for a fence charge, and we were good to go.

Step aside, Rosie. There's a new gal in town.