appliance failure

This has not been a good month for our household's appliances.

Not long ago, our coffeemaker and ricemaker both ceased to function.

Then, our toilet started to run, leaving us with a $100 water bill this month.

And yesterday was the most dramatic occurence yet as our bathroom was practically destroyed by fire in the shower.

Yes, you read right. Fire in the shower. You see, we have one of those widowmaker things that wires electric current into our shower head to heat the water. So yesterday morning I stepped into the shower, turned the water setting from hot to cold, and BAM! The widowmaker was on fire. Sparks flew through the air--almost singing my hair. After screaming bloody murder (not literally), and jumping out of the shower, I realized the wires were still on fire and burning the entire showerhead. As smoke filled up the bathroom, I threw water on the fire (I don't actually know if one is supposed to throw water on electrical fires, but that's what I did).

Coughing the smoke out of my lungs, I called our landlord to ask him to send an electrician over to fix the system.

Meanwhile, a plumber was walking down the street, and I invited him in to fix our leaky toilet, which is about the only good piece of news from the day.

I say that because the electricians came at 11:30am, and spent 3 hours here undoing all our electrical wiring, cleaning the breaker box, reinstalling a new showerhead...all of this time me being forced to endure the worst heat of the day without any electricity to power even a fan. When they finally left, I was so relieved that I sent them away with a tip, since they weren't going to get paid by my landlord til Monday.

Then I opened the refrigerator. Yup, you guessed it. No electricity. I burst into tears. I just wanted to leave the house to meet my roommate at a local coffeeshop where we go to escape the Managua afternoon heat, but now I had another problem to solve. Thankfully, we had one extension cord in the house, which I used combined with a 2-3 prong connector thing to plug the fridge into the plug on the other side of the kitchen which thank God DID have electricity flowing.

When I finally got to Esperanza Coffee, I definitely felt I had earned my cold frappaccino. Which I drank with glee.

[post script: when me and Andrea came home last night, we realized that one of her outlets doesn't work either. ugh.]