Electrical Problems

I've had a string of bad luck with appliances and electricity...

Last week I was using my 220 volt crock pot.  My meat cooked for several hours without any problems.  After I took it out to shred, I kept it on the 'warm' setting, but didn't realize I'd pinched the cord between the the pot and the outside.  It wore through to the wires, and we blew the fuses in the entire house.  (I didn't realize why it had happened for a few days, when I put the crock pot away.)  We had to spend the night without electricity, and the next morning our landlord showed us where the button was to re-set all the fuses.  (Everything in the fuse box looked normal, and we couldn't read any of the German.)

And today Tiago is congested so I was trying to use our 100 volt  humidifier in his bedroom using a transformer, which I've done before.  After about 10 minutes I started smelling smoke.  Sure enough, his whole room was smokey... the transformer overheated and started burning through some nearby plastic.  Then I was trying to clean up the disaster with a miserable baby in my arms, which was a great moment for him to stick his finger in the fan I was using to air out the room.  I don't know why the thing overheated... the fuse should have blown long before that happened.  (The power in his room did go out, but I guess not early enough??)

On top of these could-have-been-much-worse incidents, my 220 volt hand mixer just died the other day as I was finishing my Christmas baking.  So now I have to decide whether to buy a new crock pot and hand mixer to use for less than a year, or just live without.  (Nooooooooo!!!!!)  And I'm leaning away from using any transformer besides my huge/heavy one, which works well but certainly isn't convenient.  When we finally move back to the States, it will feel like Christmas to get all my 110 appliances back out of their boxes.