By Lisa Scottoline
I’m powerless.
Literally.
Not because I’m living in a country roiled by crazy politics, climate change, or agita in general.
I mean I got no electricity.
And I can’t get no satisfaction.
Tell you why.
I lose power all the time in my house, maybe twenty times a year.
No joke.
I also get power surges, which is like the evil twin of a power outage.
Listen, I’m no physicist.
I don’t know enough about electricity to tell you what either of these things are.
All I can tell you is that they’re engaged in a conspiracy against me.
I’ve had power outages and surges that fried my dishwasher, a dryer, and several computers.
My power goes out or surges during any thunderstorm, snowstorm, and even on a sunny day that happens to be windy.
Give me a break.
Snow and thunder are good excuses, but wind?
Sack up, power grid.
When did you get so delicate?
They tell me wind is a problem because trees get knocked down, and that causes a power outage. But I look outside and none of my trees are knocked down. I drive around the neighborhood and no other trees are knocked down. It’s a beautiful sunny day with a slight breeze, like a blow dryer on cool.
But somewhere, someplace, a downed tree is frying my appliances.
It’s like a butterfly effect for housewares.
Okay, I’m not stupid, so I tried to protect myself.
I bought a generator.
And last month, I got a power surge that fried the generator.
I was actually sitting in the kitchen when all the lights flickered, then went black, and in the next moment I heard a large popping noise, which was my checkbook.
Just kidding, it was my generator.
I talked to the electrician, and he told me that I should install a power surge protection system in the house, which would prevent this sort of thing.
So I reached for my checkbook, and they installed the power surge protection system.
And last week I got another power surge which fried the power surge protection system.
I’m not even kidding.
And it also fried my burglar alarm system, which is another thing I put in to protect myself.
I await the estimate. I’m going to tell them to put it on my tab.
The alarm company suggested that I put in a claim for all of these damages on my homeowners’ insurance.
And I do have homeowners insurance, to protect myself.
But we all know that if I put in a claim, my rates will go up, because that’s the way insurance works.
So bottom line, how do I protect myself when all of my self-protection fails?
At this point I have installed four backup systems, none of which are backing up.
Do you know what is backing up?
My agita, in general.
Copyright © Lisa Scottoline 2025