Dolly Did It!

The National Weather Service can name tropical storms anything they want, from Eulalie to Zebediah.  At Farview, all storms are named Dolly, and this last one was a doozie!  Dolly and my daughter share a birthday, which happened to fall on Sunday, so naturally they were both in my thoughts that day.  I'd noticed the clouds at sundown, worthy of a photo, but they were moving dead east and so never gave them another thought.  Dolly was having none of that!  By golly, she was going to celebrate.  I'd heard some rumbling over the mountains at bedtime, then shortly before midnight probably the worst electrical storm I've seen in fifteen years was on top of us.  I mean, right on top of us!  There seemed no interval between lightning strikes and thunder shook the windows like cannons going off.  Rain (courtesy of Dolly) came down in torrents.  Bessie Anne was scared out of her mind.  If she'd gotten any closer, she'd have been on the other side of me.  The cats wanted no part of this light show and ran downstairs.  Suddenly there was a loud pop and sparks flew from the electrical outlet by the bed just before it all went dark in the house.  Lightning lit my way as we (Bessie still stuck to my side like a burr) went to call PG&E about the outage.  The phone was dead, no dial tone, no nothing.  Not once in all these years and all the past storms have I lost the land line.  Yikes!  The cell phone became my life line.  I made the call and then Bess and I went back to bed, she huddled next to me as the storm went on and on.  Lying by my back wasn't close enough, so she clambered over the top of me to lie where I could put my arms around her.  Storms are not her thing, even when they're sent by Dolly.

Yesterday was a day of waiting.  I made calls to PG&E and AT&T, hoarding my cell phone power bars like gold, and waited.  And waited.  Joel and Judy had gotten electricity back by six-thirty in the morning.  Not me.  Sometime around three in the afternoon, Phone Guy showed up.  He confirmed my fear that we had taken close to a direct hit.  Important parts in the junction box were fried, but it was, for him, an easy fix.  He was just finishing up when Power Guy drove in.  It took no time for Power Guy to determine that the main transformer out on the pole was also fried, or toast, depending on who's doing the cooking.  He said he'd arranged for a crew to come and replace it, but it would happen "today."  Well, the three big trucks driven by three big guys didn't show up until one-thirty, but I wasn't about to quibble.  After a day with no water and a night with no lights, I was just so darned glad to see them at all.  Those poor guys had been on the job since six yesterday morning, and they were still smiling.  I sat in the driveway, well out of their way, and watched them switch out the transformer.  Not a lot in life really scares me, but electricity is at the top of the list of things that do, and I wanted to make sure someone would be there if one of the guys went flying off into space.  It took the crew about an hour to complete the job, and I stuck around so I could express my gratitude to each of them.

I'd also like to thank those who called or texted when no blog appeared yesterday.  It was very kind.  I've worked a deal with Kathryn.  If it's at all possible, I will let her know whatever disaster might have occurred and she will add a comment to the blog from the day before, so anyone who might have worried can stop worrying.

And so it was another day at Farview Farm.  Happy birthday, Dolly, and happy birthday, Deb!  Maybe next year we can stick to just candles on the cake.