An Electrical Day

The men from the electric company showed up bright and early (too early) to take down our power lines so that we could trim the tree branches that were all tangled in the lines. It was explained to us that, if we trimmed the trees and knocked down the lines, we would have to pay to put them back up, but the power company would come and take them down, temporarily, for free. Ed even bought a chain saw, supposedly so that we would be prepared to trim trees ourselves if Dan didn’t show up, and really because he has always wanted an excuse to buy a chain saw. It is actually a nice little chain saw, but he did forget a minor detail – it requires electricity. Fortunately, our kindly neighbors agreed to let us plug in an extension cord so that we could keep our refrigerator running, and we added the chain saw to the line. Ed and I only flailed around for a half hour or so with the saw and the giant extending ladder before the competent Dan showed up and took over (and his chainsaw was broken, so it was a good thing we had our own anyway!). Our pile of logs and branches in the back has become quite enormous, and T. is eagerly looking forward to roasting hot dogs and marshmallows over the bonfire that the fire chief neighbor has promised.

Not much school got done today, since T. considers a lack of electricity to be the equivalent of a snow day. In Florida, of course, we could get away with this, since there never really were any snow days, but things may be different here. I’ve heard it is supposed to get down to 48 degrees tonight. We did math flash cards (working on these is making me crazy – I can’t wait til my Singapore books come. I sure hope that program is as good as the WSJ made it out to be!) and then I declared the rest of the day “recess.” I swear, every time I go outside, from early morning to about 3:00, the kids at the school across the street are loudly enjoying recess. T. and I were sitting on the porch drilling math facts and T. commented that “They sound like a bunch of wild animals.”
“Look like fun?” I asked.
“Yup!”
T. knows that at some point in the day, those kids must do some work, and he wants to stay home, and I know I’d miss him, but there sure are moments!
I took some of my snow day to read Classical Writing, which is our new writing program and looks like it will be excellent, once we get going with it. We haven’t started Latin yet either, but I’ve been told that the program we will be using, Prima Latina, is very simple. Thank goodness for that!

On a happy note, some of our mold/mildew is actually tar! Unfortunately, most of it really is mold or mildew, but the really nasty looking black stuff over the circuit breaker box (or is it an electrical panel, or are they the same thing?) turned out to be spots of tar. Yay!