A long ironic story about my morning.

[Deleted]

Get up at 4:30. No power. Throw chore clothes on. All on backwards. It is pitch dark and cold afterall. MIL comes barging through our door with flashlight informing us we have no power. Wakes up toddler. Bundle her up. Put her back to bed. Call power company. Get outsourced receptionist. Conversation proceeds as follows:

ME: This is the Dairys at Dairy's Farm. I'd like to report a power outage. Can you send a truck ASAP?

Lady: Have you checked the circuit breakers in your basement?

ME: I'm aware that's not the problem. We have a barn and 2 houses out of power. There's ice or the wind knocked a tree on a line somewhere.

Lady: Have you checked all your breakers? Are you sure. It's a $175.00 charge if we arrive to find it's a breaker. No one else has reported an outage.

ME (EXASPERATED ME!): I know it's not a breaker. I'm trying to milk cows here, not plug in a toaster. We're out of power everywhere. We're also last on the line and the only people up at this ungodly hour. No else is with the waking yet to know!

Finally, receptionist dispatches a truck and tells me it'll be 4-6 hours. I had to remind her that because of the farm it's a priority call and we need to be moved to the top of the list. Truck shows up in 20 minutes (YAY!). Takes two hours to fix.

Meanwhile:

*H hooks up generator. Proceed to flip on and off every electrical thing in the barn to see what the generator will run or not. Get enough power to start milking. Our generator is about 50 years too old so it's a total toss up as to what it will power and won't.

* Help figures out there's enough power to start the coffee pot in the barn. Pour small shots of peppermint Schnapp's that was under BILS truck seat into coffee. It's been that kind of morning already and it's 5:15 mind you.

*Get up and running with milking. It's now 6:45. Take Rubes to daycare a bit earlier because she's up and freezing.

*Get cornered by over dressed (I'm in coveralls and a barn coat. Be happy they're clean!), crazy mom, whose life is just so "hard" and full of drama. She wants to know if I'm happy with the quality of care at daycare since there's a lot of biting going on these days and maybe we should address the daycare provider over her lack of "care and concern."  

She's yapping away, all I'm thinking is, "Lady. DCP takes better care of my kid than I do. Rubes is in there having pancakes and sausage. I'm going home to chug down some watered down Folger's and milk cows two hours late. If she was with me she'd have gotten dry fruit loops in her barn swing. With raisins. For health, you know. There's 6 toddlers between 12-24 months. I have no doubt it's BiteFest '13 in there all day long. DCP is doing her best."

*Get back home. Milk cows. Generator has breakdown 1/2 hour in. Pour more Schnapp's in coffee.

*Wait.

*20 minutes. Power fully restored. Milk cows in silence with p*ssy H for next 2 hours.


*Wash down barn. Get acid from cleaning in eye. Burns. One eye may now be pink and the other green but we'll live. We'll just poke them both out with the pitchfork handle I trip over in my rush to get to the house because Grace is not my middle name by any means. 


Irony:  The 20K generator H and I just shelled out for is a week late. Set to arrive tommorow.  

[mrs.jacinthe]

Egads. I'm so sorry. Sounds like a schnapps sort of morning to me.

Also, it makes me crazy when random employees know your situation "better" than you do. I used to hate being in IT and having some moron asked if I had rebooted it yet. DUDE, I just told you *in technical terms* what's going on. Do you really think someone who can describe a hardware issue in detail is NOT going to know about rebooting a computer? Your story about receptionist girl makes me want to drive out there and shake her. NO, there's not 1 breaker for that much electricity! Idiot.

[april37]

Oh gosh, that figures!

For what it's worth, my DD went through the biting stage around 12-24 months. My mom watched DD once during her biting stage and decided to skip her nap and take her to a baby shower instead. Guess what happened? Yep, DD bit another kid! Moms... gotta love 'em!

[Deleted]

Jan 29, 2013 13:39:15 GMT -5 mrs.jacinthe said:

Egads. I'm so sorry. Sounds like a schnapps sort of morning to me.

Also, it makes me crazy when random employees know your situation "better" than you do. I used to hate being in IT and having some moron asked if I had rebooted it yet. DUDE, I just told you *in technical terms* what's going on. Do you really think someone who can describe a hardware issue in detail is NOT going to know about rebooting a computer? Your story about receptionist girl makes me want to drive out there and shake her. NO, there's not 1 breaker for that much electricity! Idiot.

LOL! I totally know it. It's 29 degrees here and everything is full of ice, wouldn't that be your first guess?!?!

And I about died at the $175.00 service charge if it wasn't. I give the power company upwards of 2K a month to keep the barnyard running...$175.00 doesn't mean too much in this instance!

[thewop]

Dude, that sucks but I for real LOL'd at your story. Never a dull day in dairyland.

[Deleted]

Jan 29, 2013 13:43:43 GMT -5 april37 said:

Oh gosh, that figures!

For what it's worth, my DD went through the biting stage around 12-24 months. My mom watched DD once during her biting stage and decided to skip her nap and take her to a baby shower instead. Guess what happened? Yep, DD bit another kid! Moms... gotta love 'em!

That's just it! It's totally a normal kid thing. Rubes isn't much of a biter, but she has done it, so I have a lot of sympathy and am pretty relaxed about other kids biting. There's six kids about the same age, it's going to happen. DCP is aware, doing her best and always informs us...what else is she supposed to do about it? While I don't want to see Rubes with an occasional bite mark, she will live and hopefully learns it hurts and not take it back up herself!

[Deleted]

Jan 29, 2013 13:45:06 GMT -5 thewop said:

Dude, that sucks but I for real LOL'd at your story. Never a dull day in dairyland.

Ha! H and I just had lunch together and we laughed so hard. In that WTF just happened sort of way! It's 12:45 here and feels like midnight, it's been that kind of day.

[boiler717]

Great story telling!! Sorry such a bad day, I hope it gets better.

[ktzmoh]

I'm very sorry for your nutty morning. The story about the daycare mom made me LOL though.

And I'm fairly sure, at this point, that I'd be among the least likely to survive if the apocalypse forces us to all try to live off the land and our grit.

[april37]

Jan 29, 2013 13:47:39 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

Jan 29, 2013 13:43:43 GMT -5 april37 said:

Oh gosh, that figures!

For what it's worth, my DD went through the biting stage around 12-24 months. My mom watched DD once during her biting stage and decided to skip her nap and take her to a baby shower instead. Guess what happened? Yep, DD bit another kid! Moms... gotta love 'em!

That's just it! It's totally a normal kid thing. Rubes isn't much of a biter, but she has done it, so I have a lot of sympathy and am pretty relaxed about other kids biting. There's six kids about the same age, it's going to happen. DCP is aware, doing her best and always informs us...what else is she supposed to do about it? While I don't want to see Rubes with an occasional bite mark, she will live and hopefully learns it hurts and not take it back up herself!

Yep, totally normal! Once, another kid bit DD and the mom freaked out and kept apologizing to me. I was actually glad it happened because I wanted DD to learn that it hurts!

[Deleted]

Jan 29, 2013 13:57:25 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

I love how you take EVERYTHING from biting toddlers to no power on your farm in such stride. Like, meh, it is what it is.
You are my hero.

2 shots of Schnapp's may have helped my stride.
I may have left out the part about wanting to strangle someone this morning as well.

[Deleted]

Gotta a love a good Dairy story!  Did that mom think she was breaking earth shattering news about toddlers biting one another?  Newsflash: kids - they bite.

[ssmjlm]

Dang girl that is a lot for one morning.

And yay for peppermint schnapps!

[Deleted]

Jan 29, 2013 14:28:44 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

Someone on ML did post about a biting kid at daycare and her kid was having massive anxiety over being bitten. She had a picture that was pretty brutal. I think I would get upset over that. I had to qualify my toddler biting issues.

I am uptight and worried about everything in real life, so I would probably be fuming still about the power if I were you. I am learning.

Totally. If my kid was having bruises and anxiety over it, I'd be speaking up too! I'm just talking about your avg. run of the mill, no skin breaking, gone by the end of the day, light bite. They're babies who haven't reached the vampire stage yet! And it's pretty much a different kid everyday. If it was one consistently, I might care more.

I don't have time to be uptight..lol. It's just one thing to another somedays.

[lemondrop]

Jan 29, 2013 14:09:01 GMT -5 @justdairy said:

Jan 29, 2013 13:57:25 GMT -5 @callmefia said:

I love how you take EVERYTHING from biting toddlers to no power on your farm in such stride. Like, meh, it is what it is.
You are my hero.

2 shots of Schnapp's may have helped my stride.
I may have left out the part about wanting to strangle someone this morning as well.

BUT, you didn't strangle them. In stride...LOL!

[sierramist03]

Ugh yuck! It's cold and drizzly nasty here so I can't even think about being without power this morning. No offense but this is one of the reason Im glad I don't live at home anymore. I really don't miss dragging the generator from the shed and hoping it will start.

[emjacobs]

This story was much better than the short FB version.

I've started prefacing my calls to Verizon with "I'm a product manager in an extremely high tech software company, I know you are supposed to make me power cycle my router and restart my computer but let's just agree that I've done that and move on to stuff that will work."