Electricity and me

I have this love/hate relationship with electrical power. I depend heavily upon it for my creature comforts: hair dryer, coffee maker, CD player, microwave oven, and, for God's sake, my television. So I expect, when I have paid (handsomely, I must say) for it, I expect it to be there when I need it, which is all the time. So, yesterday evening, when I was blowdrying my newly darkened (very dark, too dark) hair and it just snapped off, leaving me sitting on my bed with half a headful of damp hair, in the dark, I was not happy. I noticed that the neighbor's lights were still on, lucky buggers. So that meant this was a localized problem. In fact, when I switched on the overhead light, it obediently shone down on me. A trip to the circuit breaker box was very unenlightening. All those bony little switches were on, so I turned a bunch of them off then on again, aware that I was going to have to go about the house and reset all those things that have digital clocks, or bear the indignity of having them flash at me forever: 12:00, 12:00, 12:00. No dice. The front room was all off, too. Our phones didn't work, and our computers were dead, too. This is very bad indeed. Fortunately my cell was nicely charged up, so I called our landlord first to find out if there was something else we should be looking for, which sent me on a pilgrimage around the house, inside and out, looking for outlets with little red buttons, which I dutifully reset. Still nothing. So we called PG&E. Now, calling PG&E didn't work very well for me before in the house on the edge of the world. We were always last on the list for restoration of power. In fact, once the whole town came on, after a wait of several days, and we didn't. I have always longed to be special, but this was ridiculous. But being in town and two women living alone, without telephones, works! They came over within the hour, poor guy had to call me from in front of the house to find us, but he showed up, fiddled with the circuit breaker box, and everything popped back on. Now, I realize this is a tiny problem. Miniscule. But let's get real. Life with a wet head and no coffee, that's inhuman torture.