36) Blackout

We've been without electricity the last three days. In an attempt to make a long story short:

We noticed our monthly bill being too low and called to inquire what was going on. Sounds strange to do this, but the bill was $10, and there is no way our electric bill could ever be $10. And we considered the possibility that this was some new electric company scheme to penalize you for paying too low. We called 2 months in a row, and 2 months later they sent someone out. A month later they cut our electricity off saying we needed to fix our bypass handle on the outside meter before we would get electricity. We complained that they did not notify us or give us time or explain to us what was going on. They returned power to our house, but a couple of weeks later turned our power off again.

We had scheduled the electrician to come, but Oncor would not return power to us until it was repaired. The next morning our electrician fixed the problem and we scheduled the reconnect with Oncor, who said it would be done that day. When I got home from work they informed me the reconnect had been cancelled.

I yelled and cussed at the lady who hung up on me. I called back and explained my frustration to the next person who rescheduled my reconnect. The next day at lunch when we did not have power restored I called and asked the status of our reconnect. The lady on the phone told me that our reconnect had been denied because we did not have an inspection, and that it would take a couple of days to schedule an inspection. She went on to say that since we had been denied our reconnect, our next order would take a couple of days. It was Oncor's way of punishing us for a bogus reconnect order.

The situation was not good, and has since been taken care of. I do not know what our possible recourse is for how badly we have been treated throughout this process...especially considering we were the ones to notify them of the problem. They acted as though they caught us tampering with the meter outside to avoid service (which is a felony). They did not catch us. We reported it the first time our bill was unrealistic.

On Tuesday night I sat in the living room, in the dark. I told L. not to come home. She stayed late at her office and eventually went to a nearby friend's house. I stayed at the house because Oncor told me someone was coming out and that they would contact me to go over the situation surrounding our meter. I decided to play my guitar, which I have not played since moving back to Dallas. Unfortunately my fingernails were longer than I wanted.

I carried the largest candle I had into the bathroom to cut my fingernails by candlelight. This was one of the scariest moments I have recently experienced. Felt like the guy in the movies who is trying to disarm a bomb at the local elementary school, the moment before he was to cut the green wire. I positioned my fingernail between the iron teeth of the clippers and wondered if I perhaps went too deep with the clippers. I worried that squeezing the handle might cause the explosion of pain that occurs when you cut your nails too short. I moved my fingers closer to the candle, but it did no good. I could not see well enough.

Ultimately I cut my nails, only causing pain once, and I played 3 hours of guitar in the dark. The guy did not show up and the next day when I called the lady on the phone told me the evening technician decided to pass our house on to the morning crew.