Utter chaos.
It's almost one in the morning. Norman is playing his guitar and microwaving something. Will is watching television AND playing HIS guitar. I'm sort of halfway between entertaining guests and making a mix-tape with Norman's stereo. Every light in the house is on. Norman's computer is softly humming.
There's a little "POP!" noise. The TV goes off. The lights go off. The microwave and Norman's computer go off. The guests giggle. Will looks like he might go hide in a closet and cry. Norman just looks bewildered. I look very, very guilty, because the electric bill IS in my name, after all.
We call the electric company. I have to talk to a machine. Customer service isn't even open until Monday morning.
We go down to the basement. We fuck around with absolutely everything that looks like a fuse.
Nothing happens. Will has me hold the flashlight. He fucks around with stuff. I yell up to Norman, in the apartment, to ask if stuff has gone back on yet. It hasn't.
After several tries, we give up and decide to call the landlord in the morning. We decide that it MUST be a broken fuse, because what electric company in its right mind would turn off your power at one in the morning on a Sunday? Of course, none of us knows how to change the fuses, exactly, because they're really fucking old-school.
We spend the rest of the night playing Go Fish and talking about necrophilia.
Ew. Gross. But, you know, once you've started down that path, it's ALL downhill from there...
I was the first one awake. I called the landlord from a payphone. He gave me a set of instructions that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. My quarter fell into some secret payphone compartment and I was disconnected.
I decided to take matters into my own hands.
Changing a fuse is about as difficult as putting on a pair of underwear. For those of you who don't wear underwear: that is, it's VERY simple. So why was *I* the one holding the flashlight last night? Dude, this is NOT right. Just because I cook and crochet does NOT mean I don't have the brains to figure out how to change a fuse. It took me five minutes to look over the equipment in front of me, poke around at it, screw some fuses in and out, and go back upstairs to make sure the lights were on. Last night, it took the boys a good hour, and the lights stayed off.
Man, this is really pretty depressing:
Lights go out. Males immediately rush to fix things, because they're men and men know how to do these things. Woman assumes that males know better than she does, because they've run out the door to fix things. Woman believes that the whole situation is unbearably fucked up and unfixable because the males can't seem to fix it. Woman doesn't try. Woman LOOKS, but male insists the whole thing is futile, and doesn't hold the flashlight steady. Alone, it takes the woman just minutes to figure it out for herself.
In a way, this is really sort of amusing. And I'm really quite proud of myself. Because in the course of 24 hours, I'd cooked quite a fancy meal, relatively speaking, AND solved the mysteries of the damned fuse boxes. I am woman, hear me roar.
In another way, it's depressing as hell. When I was in the basement with Will, he wasn't listening to me, he wasn't asking for my help, he wasn't asking for my advice, and if he HAD, gahd knows we WOULDN'T have been playing Go Fish and talking about necrophilia all night. At least, not by candlelight. But he didn't, and I'm really kind of pissed off. I feel a little bit defensive of my intelligence, AGAIN, just because I don't have a pee-pee. I mean, everything worked out well, but is it so damned wrong to maybe give the little chick the benefit of the doubt and assume, for five minutes, that she's "manly" enough to be resident electrician for the night?
Believe me, I'm manly enough. Just because my panties are lacy doesn't mean I'm not "manly" enough -- for ANYTHING.
So there.
~Helena*