A mouse has cut the wire. Goodbye!

Oh, how I hate doing without the small comforts of civilisation to which I have grown accustomed! A terrific thunderstorm came through on Tuesday night and knocked out - not our electricity, but something almost as bad: our cable connection, which encompasses our phone and internet. Thus I was stranded and isolated all day, on a day on which of all days I most sorely needed a computer, to print off the free ice cream coupons for Jane's birthday, to renew my nearly-overdue books at the library, and to cancel our free trial subscription to Netflix before it stopped being free. Many frantic cell phone calls were made to Michael at work, who went on in to the office anyway because he couldn't do anything until the cable company came out to fix it.

Meanwhile I discovered all sorts of other random things that the power surge had fried:

- The dishwasher. Now we're back to handwashing dishes. I used to do this all the time until I got pregnant and became too tired to keep up, at which Michael took over and used the dishwasher, and I found it so convenient not to have a drainboard and dripping dishes on the counter at all times that I fell into the habit. Of course the dishwasher was full up of dirty dishes when this was discovered, so I had a huge backlog to catch up on. Now it should be easier to keep up.

- The garage door remotes. The opener still works from the button on the wall, which means I can open it before setting off and then, after backing the car out, push the button and make a mad dash while ducking under the falling door. This is rather exciting at first, but it's not so exciting to get back in again, which requires turning off the car to free up the front door key, opening the front door, going around and opening the garage door, and pulling the car in. I would personally be inclined not to bother and simply park the cars in the driveway until the door is fixed, but it's getting to be hot season now, and Michael will not have this.

- The sound card on our downstairs computer, and pretty much everything on the upstairs computer. My grasp of all this is a bit more vague, but since I never use the upstairs computer and all our stuff is stored on the downstairs computer, it's not an insurmountable tragedy.

All of these things will be fixed or replace in good time. Meanwhile I'm just grateful to have phone and internet again. I can see clearly now!