Monday, February 7, 2011

You might be a redneck if.....


The mobile home was finally here, set up, stabilized, and tied down. The power company had been contacted and asked to come and set us up with power, but as of yet, nothing had been done.

I longed to move in. Though I loved Steve's family, I wanted the privacy that came from living in my own home. They had been great and everything, but a month was a long time to live with parents when you have four little kids and have lived on your own for so long, so I decided to proceed with the move in and live without electricity for awhile. After all, they were just a few yards away if I ran into trouble.

I had washed down the walls, refrigerator, sinks, tubs, and toilets, but I was stuck on what to do about the carpet. I wanted a professional to come in and clean it, since they could get it much cleaner with their truck-suction vacuum than I could with a self-cleaning upright.

It seemed that I was stuck, though, since they needed power for their vacuum to work. Hmmmm, what to do? Then I remembered that there was the extension cord we'd been using to run our lamp and fan (one at a time, mind you, as there was just one plug-in to the orange extension cord). The power source was at the chicken coop. Steve's mom and dad had put lights in there so the hens would have more light in the winter and produce eggs year round.

Deciding to not let the little things get in the way of fully moving in, I opened the telephone book and called the first carpet cleaner I could find. The conversation went something like this:

"Hello (I don't remember their name) carpet cleaners."

"Hi, I need to get my carpet cleaned."

"Okay, how many rooms have you got?"

"Three bedrooms, a living room, and a bathroom." (as an aside: I know, right?? Why is there ever carpet in a bathroom anyway??) "But there is just one thing, do we need to have the electricity hooked up before you can clean the carpets?"

"You don't have electricity?"

"Well, we have an extension cord coming up from the chicken coop, will that work?"
.
Long silence. "Ma'am, call me back when you have electricity, okay?"

So there you have it: I can look like a redneck even in the hills of Tennessee!

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You might be a redneck if your hen house has electricity but your own house doesn't!

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