They day I nearly burnt my house down

Ok, so maybe I'm being a little melodramatic, but not entirely.

Let me go back a couple years ago.
In one tiny year, my sister, my step-son/daughter-in-law and one of my closest friend's houses all burnt to the ground! It was tramatic seeing this happen over and over again, so I can't possibly imagine how bad it would be to actually live that.

This is why I have a fire phobia.

Let's be fair, who *doesn't* have a fire phobia?

So this past winter, I suddenly started tripping a breaker, which only slightly worried me as at that moment, Gene and a coworker were working on a truck outside and taxing my every last nerve watt.

But after they got it fixed, it kept doing it. Then it got worse. Then Gene was outside and SWORE he heard a huge pop.

Finally, we knew something was definitely up, and turned off the breaker. Then it snowed. And then some more. Before you knew it there was literally 4 feet of snow around my house.

In the meantime, I had exactly no outlets in my kitchen. Well, the stove, fridge, etc worked, but I couldn't run a toaster or a can opener. We finally figured out that one outlet on a different wall worked, but that was it. So it was home to a toaster, coffee pot, can opener, phone charger and two drill chargers.

It was ugly.

We called an electrician, and bless him, he came out on a Sunday even, although at this point we know it's not an emergency, he came anyway. He tested here, and there, and took some stuff apart, and stood in a snowbank.

What we determined was, it wasn't working.

Ya think?

The next step was to get into the wall and look at what was wrong with the wire, but there's 4 feet of snow up against my house right?

So we had to wait.
And wait.

And WAIT.

Then it rained.
then some more....

You get the picture.

Finally, mid APRIL, Gene takes a skil saw to my siding and cuts a chunk out. I'm totally ok with this because at some point, all the siding is going to go ANYWAY.

So look what we found:

The best guess we have, is that a mousey got in our wall, and then peed on the wires, which I guess, is really a bad deal as it eats away and causes it to short out.

Stupid effin' mouse anyway!

Gene rewired the section that was bad, and I made a mental note that I'm probably going to get my house rewired the day that the siding comes off.

But I haven't dropped that bomb on Gene yet.

He still hasn't recovered from the 6 weekend process of replumbing the whole house last summer!

Let's look at the bright side tho. The above wire I cut up and used as a tether to keep my trash can from blowing away!