it’s coming from outside the house this time

There I was, working on some stuff, watching it rain and wishing I didn’t have to do a Zoom meeting at 2pm.

Then the power went out.
Then it came back on.
Then there was a BANG that sounded very close by.
Then the power went out again and came back on again, along with this crazy loud mechanical noise.

The dogs were frantically ringing the bells at the back door all like SCREW THIS WE’RE LEAVING and I tried to tell them the noise was outside but they didn’t believe me.

I headed toward the stairs and called up to Seth like “DID YOU HEAR THAT?” which of course he did, because it sounded like an explosion, and he’s like yes, but the power’s back on now, it was probably a transformer, and I was like OKAY I KNOW BUT THERE’S STILL A SOUND and he’s like yeah things take a second to come back online and I’m like NO SERIOUSLY COME DOWNSTAIRS.

So he did and the dogs were still like EXCUSE US, WE’D LIKE TO LEAVE THIS HELLMOUTH and I was like THE NOISE CAME FROM OUTSIDE, DOGS and they were like LIES, YOU’RE HOLDING US AGAINST OUR WILL and Seth was like, okay, that IS a loud mechanical sound, and I’m like OH MY GOD I THINK IT’S THE HVAC WE NEED TO GO LOOK AT IT.

So I run outside in the pouring rain while he’s still putting on his shoes and the fan on the upstairs unit is going like 1,000 miles an hour sounding like an airplane propeller and so I go back in and tell him we need to turn off the unit, something’s wrong, and he’s like I’ll come check it so we go back outside in the pouring rain and he sees it and I’m like WE HAVE TO TURN IT OFF and he reaches over to the breaker box that’s right there and I’m like…

NO DON’T TOUCH IT, WHAT IF IT BLOWS UP

…and he’s like this box is literally here so I can turn it off, it’ll be fine.

So he takes off the breaker box cover thingie and I run back around to the front side of the house on account of we’re all going to die and he turns it off and back on again and it sounds totally fine and we do not in fact blow up and he’s like see? everything’s fine and we go back in the house.

The dogs still want to leave. We tell them they’re stuck with us.

I become convinced that the loud bang came from the HVAC and that the loud bang and the power outage affected our house and only our house so I text the neighbors and of course they’re not home so I try to check the neighborhood Facebook group but our neighborhood Facebook group is super stupid and every single post is moderated so if anyone tried to post about it, you might not see it for hours.

So then I check Nextdoor and there’s nothing there but the usual 15 posts of “does anyone know a reliable housekeeper” and some whining about masks and armadillos.

And then I remember I have that meeting at 2pm and, now, an excellent excuse to reschedule so I text her and she’s like oh thank goodness, I was hoping you’d reschedule, so that’s all fine and good.

And THEN I remember that our power company, like most power companies, has an outage map, so I go take a look at that and the little outage dot is basically directly over our house and says it affects like 380 people.

So while I’m still not completely convinced my HVAC didn’t invisibly explode and blow out power to 380 customers, it seems somewhat less likely now.

And the dogs gave up on their escape plan because we all go down together.