The Outage

Greetings everyone, I hope your day's been well.

Our August kicked off with a power outage. As I was cruising the net while the baby took her nap, the power suddenly went out! What was strange about it was that not all the trailer was out of power; the bathroom had power as did about half the kitchen. Naturally, I thought a fuse had blown. My husband was on his way home from a job, and when I sent him a message alerting him to what was going on before the deep-cycle battery on the server died and kicked me offline, he was not far from home. Since I'm quite inexperienced in dealing with electricity, I waited until he got home before opening up the electrical panel and checking the fuses. In the meantime, I plugged the bedroom fan into the bathroom outlet so that we could at least stay cool in there.

Zap! (pic found here)

After my husband finally got home, he checked the fuses and all seemed fine. It was when he checked the phases on the main in our lot that we discovered what was wrong. Our phase was ok, but the one from the power company was dead! After alerting the sleezy park management about the outage and checking with the neighbors (some had no power, some were partially powered like us, but most had power), we contacted the power company who informed us that there were no reported outages in the area. The power went out around 11:30AM, and save for some intermittent phase testing, wasn't fully restored until about 11PM. In the meantime, we had a small 800W alternator to power some fans, the fridge, and some of the computers so we weren't totally offline. But, I was largely offline because my computer's battery was out and my phone was barely charging from the weak power supply in the living room. The alternator also died for a bit because a plug wire had shorted out, but my husband was able to fix it and get it going again. Thank God for the monsoons because they cooled off the weather here, though it was quite humid.

Seriously, one of these days, the park is gonna look like this if the wiring issues aren't addressed. This outage isn't the first time we've experienced problems with the park's wiring, or other utilities for that matter.

What was the cause of this most inconvenient power outage? As it turned out, the wires feeding our part of the park were old aluminum wires (copper is the standard now and has been since the 1970s) which were NOT encased in any sort of protective pipe covering and had essentially broken apart from a massive short when a nearby leaking faucet eroded the insulation. Negligence combined with greed caused this problem. The sleezy park management has no problems taking rent money from tenants, but oh are they loath to spend anything on maintaining the park's infrastructure and prefer to cut corners on both materials and competent labor. 

My husband would periodically go up to where the park's main was (where the short had occurred) to check on the progress of the repairs, and make sure the handyman (he's a good neighbor of ours and has known us from a previous park we lived in) was ok. The handyman had to dig a hole around the broken live wires so the electrician could get to them and the only thing separating him from meeting God Almighty was a shovel with a fiberglass handle. Once the power was restored, we gave him a few beers in gratitude as he passed by our trailer on his way home.

And that was my Monday.

Manicure, or not to Manicure

Hi everyone!

Check out this cool nail tutorial I stumbled upon on Youtube.



It may surprise some of you to learn that I've never ever had my nails professionally done, not even for a special occasion. Growing up, I thought getting manicures and nail jobs were frivolous activities because even though cost was not an issue, I did alot of hard manual labor around the house that would have made long acrylic nails impractical (try mowing the lawn and cutting hedges with the kind of claws seen in that video!). I did not begrudge anyone who had their nails done, but it was not something I could see myself with due to my lifestyle.

I'm older now, and while I have given some thought to the prospect of getting my nails done for like my birthday or something like that, it's a financial expense that's a bit much for me. Being the sort of rugged individualist that I am, I'd try doing acrylic nails by myself. The paint-like quality of the acrylics I've seen in these tutorial videos doesn't appear to be terribly difficult to master and there are no shortage of beauty supply shops in town where tips, powders, and nail art can be purchased. But even that little endeavor is not feasible because not only is the cost of materials and equipment too high, but an expose by the New York Times on sweatshop nail salons described how the children born to nail technicians suffered birth defects as a result of their exposure to the chemicals their mothers worked with in the salons. I'm not done having kids yet, and I'm not gonna risk poisoning them for the sake of vanity.

On second thought, I'll just stick to hennaing my nails. At least I control what goes into the paste and because it stains my nails, I won't have to worry about the baby swallowing something toxic when she sticks my finger in her mouth to chew on.

Again, I don't begrudge anyone who has professionally sculpted nails. For some of us ladies, it's a little luxury that helps make life in these difficult times a bit more bearable. But just like in times past, I don't see myself ever having manicured nails because it doesn't fit into my lifestyle. 

An Ode to Skinny Brows

I'm not in any way a fashionista. I could care less about what is deemed "fashionable" on display on runways in New York, Paris, etc. This mostly holds true for makeup and beauty trends as well. When it comes to beauty, I try to keep up as much as my income and energy allow, which is not very much.

But no matter what, there is one thing I absolutely refuse to conform to current trends.

My eyebrows.

I have very thin, some would call, severely overplucked eyebrows. And I like to keep them that way.

Growing up, I had thick eyebrows that were flat and manly. They had no real shape to them and got my glasses greasy every time I frowned. Since no woman in my home provided any incentive for me to have them professionally shaped, I took it upon myself to do something about it when I was in high school and old enough to start figuring out what makeup was. An old eyeliner pencil, some tweezers, and some time in front of a mirror provided the foundation for the look I now bear. At the time, I credited some inspiration to Pam Anderson, who I thought rocked the skinny brows.

Me, age 18. I do not have any pictures on my computer of me younger than this

Once I moved out here to Arizona, my super-thin brows took on more refining and inspiration from chola girls I would see on the bus from time to time. This meant drawing on my eyebrows with pencils so as to give them shape and definition.

Before I figured out what blending was, haha #blendingfail

Style trends nowadays call for fuller brows. Ones that aren't so thin and "artificial" looking.

To this I say, screw you, trend forecasters! I spent just about all my teenage years with man-brows, and I will NOT yield one hair towards going back to those days. I don't look good in anything other than skinny brows, and I will tweeze the hell out of my brows to keep them that way.

Admittedly, full brows are not for every one. Same goes for skinny brows. What works for one doesn't always work for the other. But it just irks me to no end to see models and celebrities with eyebrows that I think look more appropriate on men (see: Kylie Jenner, the Kardashian klan).

Skinny brow wearers of the world, you are not alone! It's totally cool to give mainstream beauty the middle finger. You don't have to follow the flow to look beautiful. I certainly don't, therefore, I don't feel beholden to such trends like "fuller" eyebrows.

Like Fleetwood Mac sang, "you can go your own way"