MURPHY'S LAW RULES AGAIN

Murphy's talent knows no boundaries.  Just when I think nothing else can go wrong, something does.  Since I do not feel important enough to think there is a God who would do me ill, I have to look at the real world and figure the odds.  My life philosophy runs on the law of averages.  When I was terrified of taking my first overseas flight and explained to friends it was because there had been two major plane crashes in the past two weeks, they showed me that only improved my chances of a safe flight.  Since my flight was without trauma, they were obviously correct.
 
Usually, tragedies strike in 3s, Im told.  Now I have learned it is an endless loop of multiples of three.  It  used to be that people believed death comes in 3s.  That it is not only people weho die, it never occurred to me that death would be the electrical supply to a refrigerator and freezer and, like a fog, it can come in on little cat feet, not discovered until several days later since I hadf not reason to check.  When my husband, the engineer, was alive I never had to think about those things.  All I had to do was say, "Jerry, fix it."; no longer an option.

Though almost every area of my life was touched, I will comment on only one...the electrical problem.   A warning for those, like myself, who never had to think about maintenance problems in the past.  Find out how everything works in the house, especially the shut-off valve to the toilet.  That is a flood you will never want to have to clean up.  Likewise, know where the electrical control panel lives.  Unfortunately, the particular circuit in question was unmarked on mine...at least to my eyes (though the electrician, who is at least seven feet tall, found it within seconds).

My problem, not knowing how many appliances came off this one circuit was that two dehumidifiers, a refrigerator and a full stand-up freezer and an iron were all pulling their load.  The first death in this chronicle was that the iron died.  I had not imagined that replacing an iron with a fancier one would cause the whole circuit to force the breaker.  Being alone in the house I could not check the breakers easily as this one had no lights on it.  You, who may be more knowledgable might just say I should feel happy about not having a fire, thus losingt the whole house.  At the moment I am having a difficult time counting blessings in any of this, though I might, someday twenty or thirty years from now, look back and say, "Gee, I was lucky that horrible week of one disaster after another, wasn't as bad as it could have been.!"  I'm not there yet.

The problem was remedied with panic, frustration, time and money, as so many problems are.  New circuits will be created (the control box still has some free panels).  The money outlay is still to be determined.  Since my perpetual diet is still in existence, I refuse to think about the food I am having to toss and rationalize that if I had to freeze it, it is probably something I'm not eating these days anyway.

Buy stock in denial and rationalization, their value will never decrease.