Powerline Wives

So my hubby is on call starting today and most of the country is getting dumped on. We are getting up to 10 inches of snow and some people are getting ice. Needless to say, the whole power company is bracing for a lot of outages. The snowflakes here are HUGE (find me and friend me on facebook at Krista Conway… you will see picks) and two hours ago the ground was clear. Now we have 2 inches.

Hubby called and said they were heading back to the shop to get ready to work the entire weekend.

Are any of your hubbies on call this weekend?

There is talk of several American powerline companies being sent to Haiti to repair their lines. My husband turned them down because it would have meant leaving me here with our three sons by myself for quite some time. Please let me know if your husbands are going.

You may notice different look to the site and also a small social network. I wanted to install a way for us to commuicate with one another without everyone having to wait for me to post. My goal with the social network is to create a small community for support, ideas and friendship.

On the right you will see your account or a way to create an account here on the site. Just like Facebook and other social networks, you can post on one anothers accounts. Post status updates and more. I hope this will be a great way for us to talk about what our lives as powerline wives, mothers and so much more! Please accept or add me as your friend and be sure to keep in touch!

I was driving down the road today and looked over to see a couple bucket trucks set up on a side road. I instantly felt affraid to look at them. I was worried I might see something that would frighten me. Then I realized that I had forgotten to post here for a while and I it hit me. Those men are someone’s husbands, someone’s daddies, someone’s son. My husband isn’t the only man working the line with a family. I looked back to realize that the lines, the men were all covered in rubber. They were working it hot.

“Why?” I asked myself. I would go without power for days if the men working to restore it or repair it were more safe. It was to overwhelming to think of the danger our men are in just to keep people from losing power for a few hours. I know that my husband, if he read this, would tell me it is okay, but in the end I still don’t understand why they can’t just kill the line.

I sit exhausted at my computer, not knowing if anyone will read this post, but hoping that one day this log of time will serve to benefit someone. Once again, me and my two sons are alone while dad runs to save the day – another person out of power, maybe two, maybe 100. We never know when he gets the call how many he will turn on tonight or when he will be home. So, we get ready for bed… bath, jammies, milk, and kisses. I tuck the boys in by myself and they both cry because they want their dad to tuck them in. I am exhausted. At 8 months pregnant with our third son the days seem to be getting harder on my body and the help I expect when he returns home is cut short more and more these days as people trim trees into powerlines, animals blow transformers and drunks hit poles. I am thinking about my friend tonight. Her husband is a lineman too, but he isn’t on call and he isn’t helping my husband tonight. I am thinking of her because she doesn’t yet know what it is like to have a husband and a baby or young child and what it takes to raise a family with a powerlineman as the head of the family. The countless days, nights, weeks that he is out restoring power and the time that I spend similar to a single mom… just waiting for him to come home and thinking of him the entire time. Hoping that there are no distractions and that his gloves are on. For now, I am signing out… but I know that all over America there is most likely another mom tucking in her kids while her hero powerlineman husband turns the power back on…. o

I received an email today from a powerlineman asking me to continue to post on this site. I suppose it is easy to get carried away and forget to post. I had SO many plans for this site and then I decided to build apprenticelinemanjobs.com – a site to help our husbands and friends that are out of work. I will try to add more to the site over the coming weeks and post updates as well as add some pages to the site. [cpgrid return="5" preview="5"]powerline wives, powerline, lineman[/cpgrid]

After being out all night, as most of you can relate to, he has also been out all day. A little bit of wind and power is down everywhere. Our 3 year old was crying at the 9pm bedtime as he loves to have dad tuck him in. Tonight that didn’t happen – as many nights. It really makes me think about what those people without power are thinking of when he shows up at their door. Do they think he is big and strong like his kids do? Do they know that his little boy is crying because his daddy wasn’t home to tuck him in? I hope that one day people will realize the importance of our powerlineman and the sacrifices they make to keep the power on – also, the sacrifices their kids make when they work so many hours during storms, wind, rain, snow, ice, hurricanes and more.

Loving you tonight my lineman. Be safe!

Jarod is on call tonight and the storms that are thrashing the west are headed here. We are looking at a weekend without him being home – which isn’t unusual considering he worked over 900 hours of overtime last year. Whenever these storms come through I brace our household. Our two little boys don’t understand why dad isn’t home, we often lose power and don’t have him to help with heating, eating or other common issues when there is no power or a bad storm and in getting out of our often powerless home I hear SO many people bashing the powerlineman who are trying to get their power back on. I haven’t been able to keep my mouth shut when I hear it, so it poses an issue because it usually means my causing a scene in public. I suppose you don’t realize how many people support you until you ask some mouthy person if they have had their family at their house with them and then tell them that your two little boys haven’t seen their dad in 7 days. The last time I told a guy this the people who had been listening to him quickly jumped his case and told him to shut his mouth.

Much love to you wives with hubbies out of town right now.