It was meant to be figurative...

So today some girlfriends and I went to a seminar called "Homeschooling Highschool". It was done by three semi-local ladies, and it was VERY good. All three have gone under the county (as opposed to a non-traditional private a.k.a umbrella school) the whole way and had lots of great things to offer...it was reassuring and terrifying at the same time :-).

At one point the husband of one of the ladies answered a question about motivating somewhat less than motivated students and he said sometimes the father needs to "light a fire" under them. I'm certain HE meant it figuratively.

But

I came home to the words ever mother and wife loves to hear. When I asked how the day had gone without me, the hubs responded, "Well, at least the house didn't burn down." Ha Ha, that's good to know.... "No," he says, "come and look."

I should preface this with two things. We live in a really REALLY old house. Our wiring is also really old. Some is something like "knob and tube?" and some is totally current and updated. Then in the middle of that spectrum is where most of our wiring falls-hemp wrapped wires. Yep, there have been days I've been tempted to knock a hole in the wall, grab me some wire, peel a little wrapping, and chillax (JUST KIDDING). Anyway, apparently today my husband got that desperate, because I came home to THIS:




Actually, this bring us to my second preface. We've been having a weird humming electrical noise in our master bedroom wall for a few months now. We couldn't pinpoint the source, but it seemed to go away as long as the bedside light on the hubs's side of the bed and the TV in the corner weren't on at the same time. To be safe, we'd unplug the TV when we weren't watching it.

Well today, the hubs decided to clean his side of our bedroom (don't ask-MY side is full of boxes to go downstairs) and he moved his bedside table out to dust behind there. As he bent over, he braced himself with one hand on the wall-and had to pull his hand away because the wall was soooo HOT there. Not. good.

He let it cool, and then opened the wall to find THIS:

Nice-NOT!

So it appears that when the rocket scientist who wired our house put in this outlet, he didn't install it near a stud, so he ran metal strips from the outlet box (the METAL outlet box) over to the studs on either side. Not being well secured, the outlet wiggled as things were plugged in and then unplugged, and the wires moved around rubbing the ancient hemp wrapping and fraying it away from the wire. The exposed wire then heated and carried a current down the metal strip it was touching, and that resulting heat then started the wood in the wall smouldering. The walls are fairly thick and made of stucco, and that alone (along with God's prompting to the hubs to clean our room) saved us. Truly though, we literally caught it by God's grace in the nick of time.

SO now we are waiting for our favorite electrician to be available. Waiting in darkness that is. That fuse that we had to turn off to keep the house from burning down is also the fuse for our room, the girls' room, ALL of the basement, and...our microwave in the kitchen. Nope, it makes no sense to me either ;-). But it does TOTALLY derail my plans to work downstairs tomorrow and this week-at least until I have some light. It's hard to paint walls in the dark!

Never a dull moment here, but we're blessed to have a roof over our head still!