Monday, had plumber out for 2 hours - raw sewage coming out of clean-out in driveway. Had to snake out to the sewer line (which runs behind our house). This usually happens in the spring when roots grow. I'm blaming new cleaning woman who is an idiot. At least they were willing to splash around a ton of bleach and hose the whole area down - a bit cold for me to do this. They had to turn one of the outside spigots on to do this. Don't have bill yet, but figure it will be $350-450.

At 7:30 this AM, I was woken by my alarm system making a single sound -- lasted about 30 seconds. Huh? What's that? Five minutes later, it started beeping. Got up, turned on light, put on glasses - keypad says "there has been a power outage - check your battery". Huh? Turned it off and got back in bed. I had the window open and a workman's touch next door sat in front of her house with his truck running for 10 minutes. Did I mention his truck has NO muffler? Got up again - closed window.

Then I heard sort of a motor running. Again, out of bed to see if someone was in my driveway. No one. By that time, I gave up and got up, got dressed, took meds, and got the dog downstairs. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, I could hear my generator running. Aha! I guess that's what the power outage was all about!

Got dogs fed, put out, brought in. Looked online at LG& E site for power outages. It showed 5 houses in my neighborhood. I resisted my house as No 6 and went about my business. An hour later, my phone rings - its the LG&E man in my driveway - says I HAVE power coming to my house! Huh? Then why is my whole house generator running?

I meet him at the garage and we look at the electrical panels. On one of them, the HVAC circuit breaker had popped off. He tried to turn it on, but it was very stiff and he gave up. We discussed this further - he's a lineman - knows nothing about inside electrical, nor about generators. I asked him to try again to reset the circuit breaker. It took significant force but it finally reset...for about 10 seconds, when it popped off again. Said I needed to call an electrician. Oh great!

I called my handyman who does electrical but I always get his voice mail, so I told him what had happened. Yard man to take ornaments off the Xmas tree and all the lights. We got all the boxes to the basement, and then the guys came to take out the tree and haul it away, and bring back up from the garage, the table that goes in that corner. Yardman bought up the table skirt and the lamp. They all left and I collapsed in my chair.

Around 5PM, handyman calls and says he'll be right by. We went to the garage and he quite easily flipped the popped circuit breaker, generator cooled down and went off. He messed around for 30 minutes and could not figure out why that circuit breaker popped at 7:30 - 1st floor furnace set a 66, 2nd floor furnace off, two refrigerators running, and a small baseboard heater on the sun porch. Not like 6 teenage girls where all blowing their hair dry at the same time! So far, it has stayed on but it makes me very nervous. The panel is an old 100Watt one but I have a 2nd big panel for the generator and it's still all up to Code (grandfathered on the old panel) and he said he had replaced that 100Watt circuit when he installed my generator - they're very expensive and hard to find as box is from the early 1980's when we remodeled.

Good news is he didn't charge me to come by! But geeze, what's next? I don't know if I want to know!