This Cold House

I take electricity for granted. Having light, heat, and the ability to cook meat is something I just expect. But at the same time, I've always been a bit scared of it. It can kill me, so I bow to it. I call electricians to do my electrical work. They charge $200 just for a service call, but I willingly pay it, so as not to risk, you know, death and stuff.

Unfortunately, due to some recent success in hanging a new light fixture and adding a dimmer switch, apparently I've gotten a bit full of myself. When the time came to replace all the electrical outlets in my house (so I now know that you're not supposed to paint over them- something about a fire hazard) in preparation for sale, I thought it was something I could handle. Unfortunately, my friendly neighborhood handyman encouraged me in this endeavor. Now that I think about it, he can probably charge more time fixing my screw-ups than he would have doing the work in the first place, so I understand his reasoning.

So Saturday morning I successfully installed four new outlet boxes. It's not hard, supposedly. You turn off the power and connect the wires to the same places on the new outlet as they were on the old. Sounds pretty simple, right? Well, except for one small detail, all four switches worked fine. I figured that the handyman, when he comes back on Friday to do other things, would fix that small detail, which is that the light switch no longer controlled that socket. No biggee, I'm sure.

So Sunday afternoon, I tried to install six more. The first five, no problem. However, after the sixth, three of the switches I installed Saturday no longer worked, nor did the sixth socket and the two lights in our upstairs hallway. After mucking around for an hour or so with this switch and one other, which involved at least 20 trips to the basement to turn circuit breakers on and off, I gave up. We'd just have to suck up the lack of light until Friday when the handyman would come back. With an extension cord, all was tolerable.

Unfortunately, I didn't learn my lesson soon enough. While waiting for the heating guy this morning, I decided to do one more socket on the ground floor, because it had actually broken and appeared to be unsafe. That worked fine. But then I got the idea that maybe the problem with the sockets upstairs was the fuse. I think this is where the cart didn't just run off the tracks, but plummeted off the cliff like the train that pushed the time machine in "Back to the Future III- Doc Drinks Moonshine and Passes Out". I turned off the main breaker and took off the front of the fuse box. Realizing pretty quickly that I was in over my head, I gave up, but not before trying to shake loose the appropriate breaker. I think this might be the cause of my current consternation.

Because you see, boys and girls, somehow I have managed to mess up the circuit the furnace is on. It only works now if you turn the breaker off, and then back on. It runs for about 8 minutes, and then shuts off again. And sometimes, when you flip the breaker off and on, it trips another breaker at some place in the house. So I went to the basement to watch TV tonight and flipped the breaker to get another precious 8 minutes of heat, and Sharon called down to tell me that all the lights in the living room had gone out. I flipped that one back on, but this is getting ridiculous. I never even TOUCHED a wire within the circuit that runs the furnace. Nor have I touched anything on the circuit that runs the living room, or the kitchen appliances, which I found tripped when I got home.

Needless to say, I have learned my lesson. No more electricity. This is what happens when you strive to achieve bigger and better things. So from now on, I'm going to sit at home, on my tucchus, and watch my handyman rake in the dough. Because all that this has gotten me is a cold house.