From The Mind Of Myla Madson

Myla Madson

Vacuum Cleaner Salesmen, the Power Company and my Ex's Life Insurance Policy.

Okay, stop me if you have heard this one before.  A vacuum cleaner salesman is making his rounds through the neighborhood and knocks on the door of a single mom who tells him to go away because she is broke and could certainly not afford his fancy vacuum cleaner.

She starts to shut the door on him but he wedges his foot in the door and pushes it wide open.  Before our mom tells him how rude he is and is able to retrieve her can of pepper spray, our determined vacuum cleaner salesman has emptied a bag of dirt, cigarette ashes and something that looks a lot like cow manure all over the hallway carpeting and excitedly exclaims, "If I cannot get out every last bit of this mess with the BigSuck 2000, I'll eat whatever is left."

The mother of four just shakes her head and says, "Let me get you a fork, 'cause they just shut off my electricity this morning!"

Come on, you have to admit that is pretty funny.

Getting your electricity shut off kind of sucks but if you take these things personally you may begin to feel a bit depressed.  The power company doesn't hate you or anything; they are just doing their job.

Besides, sitting in the dark gives you a new perspective on all the things we take for granted, like, well, lights… not to mention the things that keep us alive like air conditioning, blow dryers and coffee makers!

My grandparents grew up in a house without electricity or running water and had to pee into a hole in the ground for heavens sake.  I'm not sure how they managed, but then again, they didn't know any differently.  Not MY spoiled little rug rats!

I'm not, for the moment, going to go into how or why the electric bill did not get paid but gauging from my children's reaction to this little inconvenience, you would have thought the world was coming to an end.

Aside from the fact that our water comes from a well which relies on a pump that relies on electricity, which we are currently out of, the deafening silence of the interruption of electron flow through the various gadgets, gizmos and a multitude of other devices designed to make a lot of noise in our home was quite an unexpected and welcome relief.

Of course the immediate whining of my four deprived electronic junkies quickly shattered any sense of peace I felt after my electricity was shut off and I called my ex to come pick up his troop of ingrates and deliver them to a temporary place of normality…his house!

Of course this comes right after my two month recovery from surgery and he was not at all happy about having to spend more time with them and rushed over to see what he could do to get my power back on.

"Money, I need money," I told him.  He looked at his wallet and then looked at the kids and then back at me.  None of these seemed to be particularly appealing options to him so he went out back to see if the power company had put a lock on the meter or shut it off at the pole…Yes, I live in the country where the electrical lines are above ground, not so far removed from the archaic time period of my grandparents after all.

This is when my ex came in with a great big smile on his face and said the power company had actually removed the meter from the breaker box and all he had to do was pop in a couple of ¾" sections of copper pipe where the meter used to be and he would have me up and running in no time.

The kids seemed very excited by this unexpected turn of events and I began to wonder what kind of hell my ex had put them though while I was incapacitated.

Aside from the legalities of borrowing electricity from the power company, I thought this was probably not the best plan he had ever come up with.  It sounded pretty dangerous and if I had not paid the power bill there was a very good chance I had not paid the premium on the life insurance policy I took out on him after our divorce either.

Perhaps another time and place I would have encouraged him to stick his hands in the inner workings of my high voltage electrical box, but I decided this was not one of those times…at least not until I talked to my insurance agent.

The ex thought I was being terribly selfish and was grumbling under his breath as he packed up the kids… I rather enjoyed seeing him this way and did a quick mental calculation of just how long I could keep the electricity off without raising a red flag down at the social services office.

Just then a power truck pulled up and a man got out and said he had taken the wrong meter.  He was supposed to take our neighbors and got the house numbers mixed up…claims he'd been shocked a time or two and reads things backwards sometimes.

My ex just about hugged the guy and asked if he needed any help putting my meter back.  I told the power man that I really was in no hurry and that maybe he hadn't made a mistake after all and that I knew for a fact I had not paid my bill for sometime now and he would be back in a day or two anyway to take my meter and he might as well just keep it seeing as he was already here.

He said that would be against company policy even though it made a lot of sense to him and he proceeded to reinstall my meter.  He then walked over to the neighbor who had been a busy little looky Lou during this whole matter and plucked his meter right off the electrical box with no warning or concern for my neighbor or his family. Cool!

Anyway, the power is back on, at least for the next day or two and the kids have returned to their normal zombie like state parked in front of their computers, televisions and video games.

I decided to see how hard it would be to make a cup of coffee without electricity and found it to be impossible.  I wrote the check to the power company and ripped up the one I was going to send to the propane company for the gas they had put in the tank last winter.

If they want their gas back, so be it, I won't need it again until at least November.  I checked the bank balance and wrote a check to the life insurance company, just to be safe, and then called the ex, who is scared to death of heights, and told him the roof needed a few minor repairs and it really wasn't safe for the children to be here and to come and pick them up until I could afford to get it repaired.

He was not happy about this as you might imagine and said he'd grab his toolbox and be over right away to fix the roof.  I flipped over to the weather channel and confirmed the prediction of gale force winds over the next few hours. A devious smile broke over my face as I unrolled the water hose and started wetting down the roof.

No, no, no… Not to make it slippery, so he could check for leaks, really, I'm not kidding.

For more from the mind of Myla, please go to http://www.mylamadson.com

Death, Destruction, Mayhem and the Grand Canyon

With a title like that, you just have to click thru and read my article, right?  Studies show that negative headlines attract more readers just like horrific accidents out on the highway cause traffic jams in the opposite lanes by those stretching their necks trying to get a look at the bloody carnage.

Human nature I suppose.  Are we a sick and twisted lot?  Yeah, I definitely think so.

I've been away for awhile, recovering from my own horrific nightmare… the kind of nightmare that would have had its fair share of spectators had it been in the public eye, or if I had a famous name.

I won't go into great detail about my ordeal, but I had a surgical procedure that did not go well and I don't really remember much about the last few weeks.

This was not surprising as my surgery was extremely risky and I had to travel from Virginia all the way to California to find a surgeon willing to take a chance on me… seems most doctors obsess over their record of success and my little ol' life is secondary to a positive surgical track record so I feel fortunate to have found someone willing to chop me up and risk their valuable reputation.

Anyway, you think about life a lot when you are about to lose yours and I promised myself that if I made it through the surgery I was going to take a few weeks and drive back from California to see this great big country of ours.

Having looked death in the eye and begged him to go away and leave me alone, I set off on my cross country adventure after recovering enough to make the long drive and my first stop was the Grand Canyon.

I wish the kids could have been with me but they would have missed too much school and my sister, who was there for the surgery, really started getting on my nerves when the drugs wore off, so I sent her home and off I went alone.

For those who have never seen the Grand Canyon I recommend that you add it to your list of things to do before you kick the bucket.  However, if you are not careful, a visit to the Grand Canyon could lead to your last day on earth as it has for more unsuspecting folks than you might imagine.

Being from a state that is overly protective of its citizens and smothers us with more laws to protect our safety than we could ever hope of not breaking just by getting up in the morning, I was quite shocked by the absence of any type of guard rails around the rim of the canyon.

Some of the observation areas had low fences but the path that led to each outlook ran right along the edge with absolutely nothing between you and the bottom but about four or five hundred feet of air.

There was also nothing to keep someone form crawling out on a rock overhang for the ultimate photo op either, and the day I was there it seemed we had an over abundance of incredibly stupid people who had never heard of a little computer program called Photoshop!

Everywhere you turned there was someone standing on a slippery rock, trying to keep their balance long enough for their husband, wife, best friend or child to take a once in a lifetime picture of them!  One gust of wind and all the camera would have captured would have been the bottom of their feet!

And there were children running about everywhere!  My heart would skip a beat every time a six or seven year old went scampering past with the parents trailing behind completely obliviously to the fact that one wrong turn or stumble would send their little one  over the edge and to certain death.

I'm not a big proponent of those leashes they make for children but on that day, at that death trap, my four kiddos would have been leashed up tight and I probably would have looked just like one of those dog walkers in New York city with a bunch of unruly pups getting all twisted up in each others leashes, but better to be safe than sorry!

As I strolled along, keeping my distance from the edge of the canyon, I spotted a little gift shop and went in to pick up some souvenirs.  Right there in front of everything else was a book called, "Over the Edge, Death in Grand Canyon".

Yes, of course I picked it up to look it over, I am a wannabe writer for goodness sake.  On the front page was a quote from someone from Park Services that said the number one question visitors ask was how many people had fallen over the edge…yes, we are a sick and twisted lot.

In the hotel room that night as I flipped through the pages of one of the most disturbing books I have ever read, I was shocked at how many people my age had died while enjoying the trip of a lifetime… and at how few cases there were of kids actually going over the edge.

There is a sign at the rim that says, "Children, please keep a close eye on your parents," perhaps not appropriate but certainly makes you think.  Most children have no desire to climb out on a rocky ledge, damp with mist, hundreds of feet above the ground during a gale force wind to get their picture taken to look cool in front of their family and friends.

I took my photos from the safest places I could find and said a little prayer that everyone else visiting would not meet their maker that day.  I left the Grand Canyon more in awe of the danger than the amazing natural beauty it had to offer.

Perhaps my near death experience on the operating table played a role in what I took from the place or perhaps it is my sheltered existence in the police state that is Virginia, but I wish they would put fences up around the section of rim that is open to tourists.

I cannot imagine the horror one must feel watching a loved one slip and fall over the edge but I can guarantee there would be no shortage of onlookers and those scrambling for a great shot to sell to the press or the publisher of "over the edge, vol. 2"

• Previous Posts:

• Vacuum Cleaner Salesmen, the Power Company and my Ex's Life Insurance Policy.
• Death, Destruction, Mayhem and the Grand Canyon
• No, Ms. Madson, An Estimate of Your Daughter's Age Just Will Not Do!
• Get Off the Tracks!!!
• Looking Out For the Little Guy
• The Beer Pager - A Drunken Review
• Laugh At Me All You Want
• Virginia Woman Wins Mother of the Year Award in Landslide Victory

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