The number in my notebook says 41,208 and the number on the dial says 41,612 and that is a four hundred and four kWh gap that did not happen because I did not run the house four hundred kWh harder this week than last week, I have every Tuesday going back to March, same time, right before the mail comes, I stand at the side of the house and I write the five digits down and I have never skipped a Tuesday, not one, so when I tell you this is the first time the notebook and the dial have disagreed by more than a rounding difference I need that to land as a fact and not a feeling. four hundred and four. I said it out loud to myself twice in the yard like that would change it. it didnt change it. this is the same math problem as the forty minutes I couldn't account for back in august, a number that should hold still and does not, except that one was time and this one is current and I am starting to think they use whichever unit is easiest to hide in that week.

went out and actually looked at the box this time instead of just the dial, because a dial can be swapped and a body wouldnt necessarily know, and the seal is the little plastic tag they crimp over the panel screw so you can tell if its been opened, mine has a serial stamped into it that I photographed back in June for no reason except that I photograph everything now, and the tag on there today has a DIFFERENT serial. not missing. not broken. different, a whole new number crimped on clean like somebody wanted me to notice the tag was fine and just not clock that it wasnt the same tag. they do this. I don't know who they is exactly, the utility company or somebody using the utility company's van as a door that opens for them, but a person who is authorized to swap a seal doesnt normally swap a seal that wasnt broken, thats not a thing that happens for no reason, my brother in law again, he says meters get audited on a schedule and I said fine send me the audit paperwork and see if they send it, they will not send it.

there was a white van two houses down for most of yesterday with its hazards on and nobody visibly working near it, I didnt think anything of it at the time which bothers me more now than the van itself does, thats how they get the good ones in, the days you dont think anything of it. Tuesday. no, it was Wednesday, the van was Wednesday and the seal was today, Im not going to blur those together just because they sit close. Im keeping the old serial number and the new one both written down so nobody can tell me later I only remembered one of them. four hundred and four kilowatt hours has to go somewhere and it is not going into my house because my house does not feel four hundred kilowatt hours warmer, it feels the same as it always does at this time of year, which means it went into recording something, and I dont have the rest of that sentence yet, Ill have it before Tuesday.

UPDATE 9/30:

Said Id have it before Tuesday and then Tuesday came and I didnt have it and I told myself the next one, and the next one came too, so thats two Tuesdays gone and Im not going to pretend that doesnt bother me, the number was supposed to go somewhere and I said so in writing, my own writing, the entry is still up. what I have instead is the wire. followed it. not metaphor, I mean I physically walked the line off the back of the box with my phone up like an idiot, out past the fence, to the pole, because a wire that carries four hundred and four kilowatt hours has to terminate SOMEWHERE and it does not just evaporate into the yard, and when I got there the tangle at the top of that pole is not what it was in the county photo from two years back, Ive got that photo too, I keep everything, theres four more lines in there now that dont go anywhere I can trace with my eyes from the ground. couldnt get the phone level, shoulder against the fence post, arm up over my head, so the picture came out sideways and Im leaving it sideways, thats how I saw it, Im not going to rotate it straight just so it looks like I meant to take it.

Same shape as the box down at the loading corridor, the one my brother in law wont stop calling a dead line, relabeled twice on a cable that goes nowhere, because a thing doesnt get a second designation unless the first one was never the real one, and now Ive got a pole doing the same trick out in the open where anyone driving by could look up and see it and not one person has, in however many years that tangle took to grow, I asked the neighbor two days ago if he'd ever noticed it and he laughed like I'd asked him something stupid. maybe I had. my father used to say a tangle like that meant somebody got lazy, just ran a new line over the old one instead of pulling the dead one, and for thirty years I believed him, he fixed his own wiring, he wasnt wrong about everything.

Four hundred and four kilowatt hours. or three ninety something, Id have to go back and recheck the dial number against the notebook because I wrote both down fast and my handwriting gets worse the angrier I am, doesnt matter, its close enough that the shape of the problem holds either way. the seal is still the wrong serial. I checked it again this morning before I did the pole, out of order, should have done it after, didnt.

phone stamped the pole photo September fifteenth, one fifty nine in the morning, and I took it Tuesday afternoon in broad daylight, I dont fix the clock on that thing anymore because its been wrong longer than its been right and at some point the wrongness is the only consistent reading it gives me.

Sorry for the wall of text.

Ill go back out with the ladder this weekend if the weather holds.

probably wont hold.

UPDATE 10/18:

Finally got the ladder up there. three weeks after I said I would, I know that, I kept the receipts on why, weather twice in a row and then the ladder itself went missing off the side of the garage for four days and came back leaning against the fence like it walked there on its own, Im not getting into the ladder today, thats its own entry if it ever happens again. point is I was eye level with the crossbar this morning before the sun did anything useful with the light and the first thing I did, before I even looked at the actual tangle, was count the insulators, because thats the kind of man this has made me. six. same six as the county photo from two years back. nobody ADDED a seventh. that matters more than it sounds like it should. somebody took one out somewhere else to keep the count sitting right at six, which means this isnt random pruning, it means theres a NUMBER they're keeping the pole at, on purpose, which means theres a schedule, and a schedule means a person, not an accident.

every splice up there is the same hand. black tape over black tape, the wrap direction repeats itself line after line, my brother in law calls it muscle memory and for once I think hes right, a man whos climbed this exact pole for ten years ties a knot the same way every time whether he means to or not. every splice except one. one line off the near side of the bar is wrapped in pale tape, not the gray-black everything else has gone, and its wound the WRONG direction, Ive watched linemen do this enough times from the ground to know the direction, and that strand doesnt follow the bundle down toward the box with the rest of them, it goes back up, behind the green panel, into the gap I couldnt see into from the ground back when I was only guessing at this. same pale tape, same wrong direction, as a different crossbar across town doing the same trick, I didnt connect the two until I was already up the ladder with my arm cramping.

my father kept a ladder exactly like this one strapped to the side of the shed for thirty years and never once needed it before he did. anyway. took the photo sideways again, shoulder against the bar, phone up over my head, Im not rotating it straight for the same reason I didnt last time. counted the insulators twice to be sure, six both times, wrote it down before I came inside so nobody can tell me later I only remembered it one way. Sunday today. no, it was still Saturday when I went up, its Sunday now while Im typing this, doesnt matter, the tape was already there regardless of what day Im calling it. four hundred and four kilowatt hours still hasnt gone anywhere I can account for and now I have a direction for where it might be headed and I dont