This is a story about me, a technician's technician, mechanically capable and an absolute perfect gentleman. Any resemblance to real live people, places or things is purely intentional and is completely ridiculous and absurd. My name is Tom. Oh yeah. Also in the story is my kid sister, Barb. Okay, she's only ten minutes younger than me, but I am the older child in our family.
We're almost 20; and yes, my sister and I are twins; but if you didn't know it, you wouldn't even think we were related. I got the height, at 6'4"; she's only 5'2". She might be a hundred pounds wet and with rocks in her pockets; I weigh in at two hundred and fifteen pounds. She got the looks; I got the muscles. She has the easy tan skin of our Greek mom; I got the fair skin from our Irish dad. Even our hair is different, mine is the red that is almost orange and I keep it really short; hers is halfway down her back and the deep auburn that is almost brown, just red highlights in the bright sunlight.
This part of the story picks up on the seventh day of our vacation. That first day had been a real bummer, all about traveling to the cabin for our planned two week stay. The second day seemed to start out bad, but turned around pretty well shortly after lunch time. The third day, actually I learned a lot more about my relationship with my sister. The fourth day, I was in heaven all day; the day started well, pre-lunchtime was fantastic, afternoon was stupendous, and the day ended in the best way that a day could. The fifth day had turned out to be pretty good, in fact, it was wonderful. Day six could have been the last day of my life when Dad caught Barb and me at the waterfall. Luckily for me, he took the time to realize that we were making love, not just screwing; he took the time to talk to us instead of just assuming that I had forced Barb into sex, he even took the time to come up with rules to allow us to still live together under his roof, rather than trying to force us apart.
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I was already awake when the alarm went off to wake us at 6:00. Today was planned as a physically active day what with replacing the wood burning stove with the new electric one and taking out the old ice box and installing the new electric refrigerator. But as I thought about it, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as I had been thinking, the washer and dryer and freezer and microwave were already in place so no need to be moving them, they were even already plugged in so it would just be a matter of turning them on. I'd still have to connect up the storage batteries, but we might even be finished by lunchtime!
I watched Barb's eyes pop open as I turned back from shutting off the alarm. They got as big as saucers when I bent down and nipped her nose instead of giving her a kiss. But I needed a kiss just as much as she did so I quickly applied a kiss before she could object. When we broke to breathe again, I told Barb that I had been thinking about it and maybe we better talk to Dad quick before we started the plan we made last night to talk to Mom. We needed to make sure that Dad hadn't said anything that we might contradict by carrying out our plan for making sure that they were both on the same page about us. If Dad had let something slip last night after they went to bed and ended up telling Mom everything and then we came along and said something different, it might start bad feelings between them and that would surely spill over onto us with unpleasant consequences. We decided that we weren't going to take any chances, we'd talk to Dad first and just to be extra safe, Barb jumped out of bed and got dressed to return to her own room before we got caught violating rule one on the very first day.
After a few more kisses and Barb slipping out the door to go back to her room, I laid back down to try to sleep a little more. But my mind was too busy with what had to be done today so solid sleep eluded me although I did drowse somewhat off and on. I know I drowsed off for at least a little while because I was awakened again when Dad knocked on my door calling me to breakfast.
Dad and I talked during breakfast and decided to bring the new refrigerator up first, and then we could take the wood stove down, then bring up the electric stove and finally take the ice box back down to the basement. As I thought about it, all of it was just plug and play. The only hard part was getting the new up from the basement and getting the old down to the basement and Dad's foresight in having an all-terrain two wheeler would make even that part much easier.
First thing, Dad and I moved the ice box over to the side so we'd be able to put the fridge right into place. Mom and Barb cleaned up the floor as Dad and I went down to get the fridge to bring it up; moving it wasn't a piece of cake, but it wasn't really all that hard to do either. We plugged in the fridge to have it start cooling off while Dad and I took the wood stove down. Mom popped out the tile fillers that Dad had put in beside the wood stove to fit the slot of the slightly larger electric stove so that when we brought the new stove up, we were able to slip it right into place. Dad finished hooking up the stove while I went down and brought up the vent fan unit to replace the vent pipe unit of the wood stove. Barb went down with me and I told her that I had asked Dad if he and Mom had talked any more about us last night and he had said no; so she could follow the plan as we had explained it to Dad, she could go ahead and talk to Mom so Mom would hint to Dad as we had explained to Dad was our plan. We knew that it would be best to get everyone on the same page as quickly as possible.
Once Dad and I took the ice box down to the basement, we decided that we had done enough work for the morning and we all sat down to enjoy the look of the kitchen with the new appliances in place. But it was only minutes before Mom said the whole kitchen needed to be scrubbed down to clean up after all the mess of moving the appliances. She wanted it done before any lunch would be prepared and of course, Mom is the boss in the kitchen. Mom decided that Dad and I would not be much help in cleaning in the kitchen and so she sent us out to 'play' with the windmill. I quickly agreed as this would give Barb her chance to talk to Mom and I didn't want to be cleaning in the kitchen anyhow.
So Dad and I went out to the generator shed where the controls for our electrical system were located so we could check the meters and recording devices to see how well the windmill was doing as a power source. It was good to see that even in the calm of the night, the windmill had been cranking out enough electrical energy to power the whole house including all of the new appliances if they had been hooked up and running. There was even more than needed and would have been charging the battery back-up system if it had been connected.
Dad and I discussed whether we should go ahead and order all five of the other windmills' pieces or if we should only get the next one for now to allow data to be accumulated for a longer time period first. We decided to wait until at least the end of the week to have more data available. I also took a look at how much I would need to do to get the battery back-up system up and running and decided that it would only take a half hour to forty five minutes at most so I could easily finish that this afternoon right after lunch. I didn't want to have the electric disconnected and be in the middle of the wiring while Mom and Barb were trying to fix lunch, or when they called us to lunch. I decided that it would be okay to start wiring the six oversized storage batteries together as long as I stayed away from the connection to the live wiring. Each of the batteries was so large that they would store a three day supply of energy for the entire cabin even if all the lights and the current appliances were being used continuously.
Once we were down to talking about the battery back-up system, I could tell that Dad really wanted to talk about something else. I figured that it was probably the situation with Barb and I, and I really didn't know if I wanted to get into that just yet. I especially didn't want to talk about something and have Barb think differently or find that Barb had talked to Mom and said something different. I'd be really glad when everyone was on the same page as to what they knew about how we felt.
Ahhhh, saved by the call... it was time to go in to lunch. I caught a slight nod from Barb obviously telling me that she had talked to Mom as per our plan. We would have to wait now for Mom to do her hinting to Dad before Barb could take Dad off to have her conversation with him. Of course, Barb talking to Dad was a non-event since Dad already knew everything, but we had to cover for Dad not talking to Mom right away when he found out. I'd get details later when I could talk with Barb when we were alone.
