Watch Us...

When our circuit breaker went off - again - last night, Gecko was...well, he was over it. And so was I.

"Jeeezuz! What the... forget about Watch Me Airstream, you should rename the blog Watch Me Explode."

"Ha!"

"Watch Me Airbourne!"

"Ha!"

"Watch Me Decompose!"

"hmmm...not sure about that one."

"Watch Me Have A Goddam Meltdown!"

"Sing it Gecko!"

Wow - it has been a rough, hot week and a half trying to get Beulah up and running. She sure does look purdy, but purdy looks don't cool you down when it's 95 degrees outside and the humidity has wrapped it's sweaty tentacles around your head.

Much like owning a stationary house, it's taken us a minute to figure out what runs on what: the aircon works (or in our case, does not work) on electricity, the outlets work on electricity (sometimes) but they will default to battery, the stove works on propane (leaking), the fridge works on electric but will default to propane and the hot water heater we've just kind of ignored, choosing to stick with solar. We've been tripping circuits, ingesting propane and I electrocuted myself when my ring touched the door and gave me the jolt of the century. I can't say we felt entirely comfortable living in a fully charged metal shell that smelled like a gas station, but we didn't have much choice other than sleeping outside, where our lives were in equal danger with the swamp monsters and black bears that roam around at night.

Then, as if Beulah is gauging our worthiness for her love and affection through perseverance, when it's time to show a mechanic exactly how the electric isn't functioning properly, it decides to put on it's best performance and run perfectly until the mechanic is safely gone.

We were validated once when the aircon guy was here and we had him take a look at the propane lines. When we moved in, Gecko had tested it, we smelled gas and he turned it off. When the mechanic turned it on he smelled the propane as well and was surprised at how big the leak on the stove line actually was.

"Y'all ain't afraid of fire are ya?"

"Uh...no...not that we know of."

Then he lit the stove and it was as if he had just drilled a hole to the earth's core. The flame from the leak was one you could roast marshmallows on.

"It's a good thang you turned that propane off when you did because you could ave blown yourselves up."

After he fixed the stove and left we went outside to enjoy one small victory in the case against Gecko and Andriana vs. Beulah and the Mechanics.

"Well, at least we got the stove working."

"Yeah, at least we got that."

"It's beautiful outside."

"Yeah, it sure is."

(five minutes of silence)

"Do you smell propane?"

"Goddammit!"