The wiring in my house is so janky it’s really a miracle it hasn’t burnt to the ground. This house was built in the mid-sixties, before a ground wire became code, so there’s just a pair of cloth-covered wires running through all of the walls. I’ve replaced the majority, if not all, of the outlets, but the wire is still original.

The wiring makes no sense, either. If you flip a breaker, you might kill the lights in one room, some outlets in another, and a light in another. It’s absolutely impossible to label the breaker box. So, for the past couple of years, I’ve had a space heater to keep me warm while I toil away on my computer. I’m limited on outlets I can plug it into in the living room, and my only option is on a circuit with part of the kitchen.

It finally got cold enough to warrant dragging the space heater out today, but I forgot that if someone uses the microwave, it blows the circuit. Naturally, it’s pouring rain outside, so I had to get soaked when I went out to flip it. I think the breaker is going bad (Breaking Bad?), though, because it did nothing when I flipped it. So, I had to go back out in the rain, all the while hyper-aware of the risk of playing with electricity in the rain, to flip it again, and again, it did nothing. Now, we wait for it to stop raining. I’m not going back out.