Fear my wrath

My headache went away, and I survived Wal-Mart. Then we got home, and relaxed for a couple hours. We were going to watch a movie on the On Demand, the day was turning out to not be too bad. Then the power went out.

In 90 degree heat with almost 80 percent humidity, and I have an 11 week old infant. I gave it fifteen minutes and called the Power Company. They blew us off stating it wasn't their problem, that our maintenance people needed to fix the problem. So I called our Rental Company. I was told to call the Emergency Maintenance Contact. He wasn't answering his cell, and had a message to page him. So I did. Meanwhile, it's been half an hour and Joe's checked the breakers and this is not something we can fix. So I called the owner. (I am not putting his contact info 'cause he was pretty standup, and stuck in Iowa)

Jim talks to Joe about the state of the fuses and whatnot, and tells us he will get the number of the maintenance people to make sure someone comes out. About an hour after the power went out the maintenance people finally show up, and determine that it is a problem with the main line coming into the building, and the Power Company does indeed need to come. An hour after we originally reported the outage.

So the power company is outside the building for about half an hour, and nothing is happening, and they are still out there and nothing is happening. The word comes down from on high that they have replaced their part of the line, and will not be doing anything else. That Local Electric Company will be coming "at some point" to fix the rest of the line.

We wait for an hour, and called the local Electric Company. Their (so far) nice answering service lady tells us that the electrician is not answering his pages and no one can contact him. Fine. So I called back the Power Company, who won't do anything until rental maintenance man tells them that the breakers were re-set. I then call back rental maintenance man, and plead with his voicemail for him to call the Power Company.

The phone tag continues until 4 AM, by which point I am leaving regular messages with the rental agency, the maintenance man, the local electric company, the power company, and after I even had a chat with the police on whether or not there was a local agency who monitored all this, and could force someone into action. (There is not).
They pissed off a mommy, and in weather that kills infants and old people I was not about to run that risk. So I told them as much. (The messages included the statement that I would hold the rental agency liable for any illness that Jack incurred. It's the principle, dammit.)

Now, Jack actually pretty much slept through all of this, and other than wondering why we were hanging out in the hallway by the open back door that let in ambient light, probably never noticed anything different. But he could have easily been made sick (we would have gone to the store and hung out in AC if it seemed like he was overheating, again, principle people!) and I wanted someone to acknowledge their responsibilities. There are laws preventing power shut offs to the poor during extreme weather for a reason. But no one wanted to get off their asses and do their jobs.

One man told me "I don't know what anyone can do at 4AM anyway". Look asshole, the power went out at 9:30. The fact that it's now 4AM and I am still without power is not something you want to be throwing around as no big deal. And you certainly aren't helping your case to act like you don't care, when you are at home in your air conditioning. If people had done their jobs from the beginning I would not have to be "bothering" you at 4AM. So shut the fuck up.

I was finally able to fall asleep around 5 or 6, and the power came back on at 7. Joe's computer is beeping periodically since they managed to fundamentally screw up the wiring somehow, but so far I've not found any food that's gone bad, and no one seems dehydrated. But Oh My God the bitch was out hard last night. I fully expected to hear from the rental agency today with threats of restraining orders. But I didn't, so I guess we are all good.