Murphy's Law Meets A Tender Mercy!

I have always believed in Murphy's Law:
"Anything that can possibly go wrong, does."

And for me the law also includes this phrase:

It will go wrong at the worst possible moment!"

I went up to use my hair dryer last night, and it wouldn't work. Hair dryer broken? Not too serious. I tried something else and it didn't work either! Now I realized there was no electricity. But not to worry. I am as calm as a summer's morning. We have these in our bathrooms and garage:

They are GFI's or Ground Fault Interrupter plugs which are actually a wonderful safety device. But they can go out shutting off all the electricity on that circuit and you need to push the red button. The head honcho for this circuit is out in our garage behind a freezer and couple of tons of wheat. Dan kindly climbed back there to push the button. But something was wrong with the button. He went to the circuit breaker box and flipped all the switches. Still nothing! Now I stared to panic. Both of our full freezers were now off and there was no electricity for any of our bathrooms with four overnight guests arriving soon.

I hate all those advertisements people leave on your door knobs, but a few months ago one was left that said "Electrician specializing in small jobs." I liked the sound of that and put it in my file. So last night we called him and he was able to come right over. Turns out he lives two blocks away.

He started working. He thought we probably just needed a new outlet which would take just a couple of minutes. Hooray, we could be on our way to FHE. But after replacing the outlet, there was still a problem. More work. Now he thought that it was one of our freezers causing the problem--that the freezer cord was broken; hence, the freezer was broken. More panic. Where will I store all of the food in that freezer? More work. No, it's not the freezer; there is something else wrong further down the line. He did this in all our bathrooms:

He started saying if he couldn't find the problem, it would mean tearing into the walls. What?!! I have company coming! I'm having a wedding reception here this weekend! I can't handle this right now! And by the way, how much will this cost?!! He kept working. He still couldn't find the problem. I added more prayers to the ones I'd already said. Then he asked us if we had any outside plugs? Yes, we have three in our backyard. "Those would be connected to this same circuit," he said. "Is there any chance any water could have gotten into any of them?" Dan and I both start thinking. Light bulb! Just this afternoon I was using this wonderful product ( it works great!) washing the outside windows on our two-story house with a hose:

And there is an outlet directly under one of the windows I was washing! He checks the outlet and BINGO! That was the problem! It took only a few short minutes to fix it and we had all our electricity back! (Gazing upward: Thank you!)

So this weekend at our home there will be clean windows AND you can use your hair dryer, but be prepared-- for as you know, we live by the law, Murphy's Law!