We had big goals for this morning: sleep in (the older kids especially). I am thrilled to report that they accomplished their goals. I cracked Zari's door open around 9:30 am and she finally wandered out at 10 am.
Eric, Ivy, and I went for a morning swim when Zari was still conked out. The water was beautifully clear. I swam around with Ivy for a while and enjoyed watching her play in the water nonstop. Flip, dive, flip, handstand, flip, twist...she doesn't stop. Eric came back from treasure hunting with only two mismatched shoes.
We did some piano practicing and tidying up, but it was mostly an easygoing day. Dio had a friend over. I did a bit of final mudding & painting on a few areas (not the wallpaper, but other parts of our own apartment that needed attention).
Dinner was roast chicken, salad, pineapple, and dark chocolate mint cookies. "Please, please can I have one more cookie?" Zari begged. "Nope, one is good." She kept trying but I give her points for persistence.
This afternoon, our power went off suddenly. We didn't have much going, just a crockpot and two AC units set at 27 C (around 80 F). We flipped the main breaker and went back to our normal life.
But then this evening, right when we were putting Zari and Dio to bed, it happened again. This time, the breaker wouldn't even turn on. We tried all sorts of things and it would trip immediately.
Of course this got all the kids wired. I think they thought it was a horrible dire emergency because Ivy started crying and asked to sleep with one of us. We assured her that no, lack of electricity is not an emergency at all! Just an inconvenience.
At this point we were worried that our new heat pump system was the culprit. Because that was the only thing we had changed recently.
I then had a brilliant thought: "Why don't we borrow power from the Communist apartment? We could at least plug the fridge in and save our food from going bad."
I am SO SMART. haha. So we got all the extention cords strung from that apartment and plugged in the fridge and our wifi router. Priorities, right?
Well, guess what happened? The entire circuit breaker in THAT apartment tripped, all the way down to the main breaker downstairs.
We kept trying different combinations of extension cords, wondering if the issue was in one of the cords. But eventually a pattern emerged: every time we plugged the fridge in, it would trip the entire apartment breaker (45 amps).
With that figured out, we were able to reset our own circuit breaker and get everything else functional. But now we have a nonfunctional fridge. I checked our warranty from when we bought it just over 2 years ago. It came with a 2-year warranty and, hallelujah, I had purchased a 5-year extention! So late this evening I was on the phone with Darty (a big appliance & electronics store, like Best Buy or Sears). We'll be getting a phone call tomorrow from one of their technicians to set up a repair RDV for some time this coming week.
So, good news: we'll get our fridge repaired at some point
Bad news: not in time to save our food
Good news: it's not our heat pump system, as we had originally feared
I am including an actual photo that Eric took this evening when he was trying to turn his phone flashlight on.
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