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Wednesday, July 12, 2006

 

Our Very Own Hanukka Miracle
. . . . . . . . or . . . . . . . .
How We Came from Darkness to Light
(almost through too-big a light…...)


So, it all happened because of one little nail.

About a month before last Christmas, I have replaced the light bulbs in my studio with a pair of energy-saving fluorescent ones.
The light was fluent and plentiful, but – after a day or two, the bulbs started to blink nervously, until the light was gone.
I went back to the previous incandescent bulbs, that gave me nasty looks about betraying them for their more glamorous competitors, but forgave me (or did they?) and generously shone their light on the room.
They functioned perfectly for several hours, and then caught the annoying winking symptom.
John came to the conclusion that either aliens have moved into the fixture and are trying to communicate with us, or the fault is in the lamp’s wires. Opting for the less social theory, he went through all the wires, strengthening and reinforcing and tightening and fastening together, and came back sweaty and exhausted – and the blinks went on.
We decided that the lamp has to go – a decision that did not shatter us with sorrow, mind you, as we wanted to replace the ugly thing long ago anyway.
We cheerfully went to Home Depot, got a much more cleanly-designed lamp, and came home with a relieved smile.
Little did we know…
John has rolled up his sleeves, screwdrivers were pulled out of their cozy toolbox, and he started to change the lamp…
.....…and changed…
..........…and changed…
...............…for several hours...
And the blinks went on.

Now, I am quite sure that by now, many of you wonder (especially those of you with the sweet dulcet feminine voices): "Why did you not call an electrician?".
Excuse me?!?
Call?
An electrician??
- - - John???
What the hell for????
John, who’s the ultimate handyman, and no less stubborn than me (and that means very, very stubborn…), does everything with his own hands!

And so, he worked and worked, and made several trips to OSH and bought new bulbs and wires and testers and and two cows and a special screwdriver (and those trips, I suspect, were an added value for him, as John in a hardware store is like me in an art supplies store…).
Like a good detective in Film Noir (and with the same masculine severe expression…) he cross-examined each and every wire, made sure they have their stories straight, went up to the attic to check what’s going on, came back down, went up… down - - -
- - - and after 3 days of comprehensive research both in my studio and in the attic, in which he used advanced torturing methods of the ceiling, the wires, the wall, the light switch - and his lovely wife (who was recruited to the task in order to hand him the tools he cannot reach with his ultra-short hands, and in order to make sure his efforts are being accompanied by admiring eyes…) he announced, sweaty and proud, that it works fine.

And, indeed, it did.
Worked wonderfully. Hardly ever blinked.

However… a week later, John came home from work, came into my neatly tidied-up studio (a highly rare phenomena that only happens when the sun is at a very certain angle to Venus - and when guests are about to arrive. And indeed, his mom was to arrive the next day), and pointed with reproof at the new lamp, that was anything but lit, after it gave light so nicely most of that day.
I was utterly surprised, and denied any involvement with that flaw.
John played with the light switch, turned it on – and the light came up.
He then turned it off – and the light stayed on! Perpetum mobile and a very nice magic on one hand, but quite disturbing, on the other…
Another trip of the man of the house up to the attic yielded nothing but dust and a gloomy face, so we decided that we’ll call an electrician in the morning.
No, wait, you’ve got to understand: we decided to call an electrician!
John!!
Decided!!!
To call!!!!
An electrician!!!!!

Somewhat exhausted, and a bit frustrated by not being able to sit in my studio, which was now in the dark Middle Ages, I went to the living room to work on the phrasing of an agitated Email to the art supplies Internet provider who shipped only part of the order for which I have paid for a couple of weeks earlier.
John was still in my studio, probably glaring at the non-cooperative lamp and bulbs.
After a while, I asked him to help me with the Email, so it comes out very angry yet ultimately American.
In response, he called me to come to the garage, and I went there – with the laptop, as I thought he wanted to help me there, though I was wondering about the strange tone of urgency in his voice.
And there he stood, sniffing vigorously, and asked if I smell something.
“Sure”, I replied cheerfully, “there’s a burning smell. Can we continue with the Email now?”.
(OK, OK… in my defense, I have to say that the supplies which were not shipped were 45 sheets of very expensive watercolor paper; and what does this smell has to do with it? I wanted to paint!!!).
He informed me that he sensed the same smell near the attic, so we went there, and – sure enough, the same odor was there.
And so we spent several minutes doing aromatic treks between the garage and the attic, until eventually John brought a ladder and climbed up to the attic. He took a flashlight with him to the trip, and poked lengthily around the area of the wires that lead to the guilty lamp (yes, of course he disconnected the power. What do you take him for? OK, so he may be checking the grill’s propane container while smoking a cigarette, but he is not that imprudent when electricity is involved… well, kinda...).

10 minutes later, I got fed up waiting below, and my neck was showing alarming signs of stiffness, so I climbed up (not all the way, it’s high…) and looked at him with growing interest, as he shines the flashlight into the light fixture in my studio.
The smell has grown a bit stronger…
And then he looked in my direction, and asked, “Hey, do you see smoke near the attic light?”
“It’s only dust”, I informed him, but the smell has grown ever stronger, both in the attic and in the garage (while he was up there, I continued the treks on my own now and then, just to keep track).
And then we looked again at the dust, which was ascending in a manner that was way too impressive and frizzly for mere dust – and all of a sudden John has leaped, uprooted one of the boards that comprise the attic floor with untypical assertiveness, and cried out, “Aha! Found it!!”.
Dramatic smoke came up from the gaping hole, and the terrified corner of my horrified eye has caught a blackish part of the nearby beam…

Now, in Israel we grow up on the profound theory that there is no smoke without fire, and if there’s a smoky odor and a blackened wood – there’s a flame in the neighborhood, and the house, how shall I put it gently, is made of, well, wood and paper?

“Should I call 911?”, I asked with dismay.
“No”, said John, sounding utterly offended.
(Well, he’s right.
.If we haven’t called an electrician, why would we call the firefighters?
.Are we really that wimpy? Don’t we have hands?).

- - - And the smoke keeps on going with admirable diligence.

John looked again at the epicenter of the happening, and demanded, “Bring me a bucket!”
I galloped to the garage and came back with the nice blue bucket.
“Should I fill it with water?”, I asked with sheer and inexcusable retardation, and then it occurred to me that I’m actually quite intelligent on a daily basis, and added “but wait, we cannot spill water on electricity-induced fire!”.
“No, no water”, said one very astounded John (who also had a vague recollection of marrying an intelligent being), “just the bucket. Empty. And fetch the fire-extinguisher”.
(Aha – and only then I recalled the existence of those lovely red creatures that until that moment were just hanging out in the closet…).
I fetched.

He sprayed with all his might, hurried down the ladder, coughed heartily, went back up, sprayed again, came down, up, spray, down, cough - - -
And then filled the bucket with a blackish smoldering thingy, handed it me, and my job was to run to the backyard (while yelping “Aw! Awwwwwwwwww! It’s hot!!!”), empty the steamy contents onto the grass, hose it down with plenty of water, and then rush back and hand him the empty bucket, which was filled again and again and again with this brownish thingy.
This thingy, I have later learned, is in fact the insulation, which basically looks like mesh of paper/fabric/potatoes (probably because that’s what it’s made of…), and does not exactly seem like the stuff that would stop fire…
Personally, it seems to me that the insulation and the fire actually got along very well together, until we caught them red-handed, exposed the fiery romance and ruined their chance to a more fervent affair.

And so we worked, John on the ladder in a heroic pose with his steaming head up in the fervid attic and moi running between him and the rainy backyard (in the dark, in the rain, alone, barefoot, uphill, both ways) with buckets abundant with singed insulation, while keeping the phone in my peripheral vision – as it was carrying the promise of red-helmeted heroes in their shiny red fire truck that would have brought a lot of inetrest to all the neighbors and provided lots of discussions.
The bucket, by the way, is now adorned with an unforgettable scar, as the hot embers that were relocated into it must have been too burning an insult, and thus melted the bottom, which is made of rigidly stiff plastic.

Four hours later, the house still smelled like July 4th, but it was over.
John went out to smoke and relax (despite my claim that he has been smoking enough up there, though somewhat passively), and we were both exhausted, but much more clamed down, as we understood what has happened.
(And now you’ll realize that I did not tell the lamp tale in vain…).

That board that John uprooted to find the fire was reinforced into place with nails.
While John was working on his thesis about the reason for the malfunctioning of the lamp, he went up to the attic several times, and at some point realized that this board was a bit loose, so he whacked it back in place.
Apparently, that mighty smack has shoved one of the nails straight into the heart of the electric wire connecting to the light switch. No idea why nothing’s happened immediately, but after several days (perhaps due to the rain or the humidity or the fact that I have left the light on for several hours, or maybe due to those aliens), the wire heated up and created a short (which is the explanation to the light-on-while-switch-is-off magic).

And the best part – out of the warmth and coziness, was born Fred, the baby ember, that started to graze on the beam under the board, and to penetrate into the insulation, which - despite my slander, is apparently quite fire-proof, as it kept little Fred in its emberyonic state (pun intended…) and did not let it develop into a flame, at least during the initial stage.
So yes, a terrifyingly impressive part of the neighboring ceiling beam was burnt, and a vast amount of insulation has courageously sacrificed itself (4 packed buckets, which is a lot!), yet the damage is, in fact, negligible.

Basically, it’s oceans of luck that we were home and did not go to dine out, and that’s probably because John went for a haircut after work.
And no doubt John (who from now on shall be called ‘John The Maccabee’, due to the proximity of the imminent holiday of Hanukka) has saved our house from sure fire and brought us from darkness to light, and the story shall be told for at least 8 days in dozens of versions, to whomever wants to hear and those who do not but are too polite to say so…

So let’s not get into the petty tiny technical details like the minor actuality that in fact, all that was caused by John himself, who proudly declared:
“See what an incredible husband you have?
One who manages to solve the problems he causes!”.

Yep…………..

As they say, “Behind every successful man there’s a woman rolling her eyes…”.

And, just for the record, some questions that were asked by his rolling wife:
- “Why didn’t we call 911?”
- “Why isn’t there a smoke-alarm in the attic” (well, there is, now).
- “Why didn’t we call 911?”
- “Why didn’t we call 911?”
- “Why didn’t we call 911?”

John showed me the wire that was mutilated by the nail, and it looks gruesome, the kind of things that the inspector with the wrinkled forehead in “Law & Order” finds when he digs amongst the ashes at the scene of the arsen: two ends with wild metal-hair protruding with black spots – a sight for sore eyes indeed.

But – it wasn’t really over.
There was an urgent need to fix the wires, or more accurately change the wire, that went up to the wires’ heaven, with a new fresh wire, and shove it through the wall towards the light switch.
“Shall we call an electrician?”, I asked with incorrigible inherent naivety.
“Na…”, scorned John, “It’s a very simple thing to do”.

Haaaaaaaaaaaaa…………………

And so, he got up the next morning, rosy-cheeked and merry, woke me up with that annoying energy that’s typical to morning people, and turned into a one-man recruiting center, as he was about to replace the wire, and I was about to become his little helper.

You see, real men never ever work alone.
They always have a congenial assistant who hands them the screwdriver and takes back the screwdriver and again hands the screwdriver because they forgot to drive the screw and takes the screwdriver back from their tired hands – and all with gracefully flowing gestures.
(The novel idea of simply putting the screwdriver nearby does not exit on Mars. Only on Venus.
And if you dare suggest that proposal of efficiency, the response is an utter insult and a comprehensive lecture about how they have saved the house from the fire and how can I not even be willing to hand them the screwdriver, Oh, and apropos screwdriver, hand it to me for a second…).
We played the shove-‘n-pull game, for an hour or two, with the new wire which consistently refused to pass through the wall. John sitting comfortably on a chair near the light switch, and myself performing Cirque-du-Soleil acrobatics on top of the ladder, trying to push and shove – and nothing worked - - -

- - - so, my studio ended up having a grand hole, right above the switch, which John has cut in order to work around the obstacle that blocked the wire from passing.
Yes, I did write ‘cut’, and not because my English is so poor, but because that’s the way it is in the USofA, or at least in California: you do not break the wall with an ax or a sledge-hammer like you do in the holy land, but you follow this simple recipe:
- Take one cutting knife (yep, the one you use for cutting tomatoes will do, only a toothed one)
- Take one wall
- Cut through.

And so, the saga was not over.

Indeed, the darkness has been driven away, my studio got lit with the luster and glow of many lumens and the merriment was opulent.
And yet, there was a hole in the wall (and also in the bucket, dear John, dear John…), but – what does it matter?
John will fix. Sometime.

And only when the hole came to live with us, only then was I enlightened with the ultimate understanding, my face shined with the light of wisdom, and my eyes - that were in advanced stages of double rolling - lit up.
Because I finally got it.
I understood the insistence of doing everything on your own.
Because, if you call a professional, he will just come and fix it. Like, boring!?
However, if you do it yourself, not only is the ego getting bigger in several magnitudes, as you feel that you are Da Man, and there’s a lot to tell the guys, but you also get the added value and sheer joy of causing damage while fixing something.
And then you need to fix the new damage…
...and when fixing that, you break something else...
and this is how you get into this endless loop of self home-improvements and you go to OSH again and again and meet lots of guys who have rolled-eyed women at home – and that is the meaning of life.

So, all that’s left is to glorify and praise the private handyman, pat him on the shoulder with discernible commendation, and find comfort in the gladdening stories of friends who have also been blessed with such men.

“OK, but what about the watercolor paper???”, y’all ask with growing anxiety.
It will arrive.
Sometime.

Actually, after John went to work and left me with a gap in the wall, I called that Internet supplier and took all my grouchiness on the customer service gal who replied to me in frozen politeness, while relentlessly Ma’aming me.
My own arguments were presented in no less matter-of-fact frozen politeness, but I was also armed with the exhaustion that comes from the handing-and-receiving a screwdriver 78 times, and a lot of rage about the fact that this website’s negligence to ship what I have paid for was not happening for the first time.
The tiresome discussion (which included talking to her supervisor) ended only after I got tired of playing the role of the woe-stricken customer whose whole career is ruined by the lack of paper, and allowed myself to generously accept their peace offering of refunding the shipping fees (which is pretty nice!).
I have reviewed with her what is to be shipped to me in order to make sure it’s clear, emphasized how disappointed I was that I will not get it before the holiday, and cheerfully greeted her with a Merry Christmas (holiday spirit or not?).
She replied faintly, and I am pretty sure as for the nature of the last word in her greeting, which was probably said after she made sure the phone is securely hung up……. ;-)

OK, I am dead tired now.
Just so you understand, I have first written this nutshell concise report in Hebrew, and today I decided it should be translated to English, so that non-Israelis can enjoy and joy as well…

Happy, Merry, Cheerful, Blissful and Wonderful Christmas-Hanukka-Kwanzaa-New-Year-anything!!


Oh, after that eventful night, John sat and wrote a heart-warming poem about the whole thing, which he first sent out as an original way to tell his boss and co-workers why he was going to be late to work the following morning, and ended up sending it to his whole distribution list. (So, some of you have already read it, and now you have both sides of the story).
And so typed the husky firefighter, sweating more than he did up in the attic, counted syllables on his scorched fingers, and – here it is, plus the picture he took after it was all over.
By the way, the fearful “flame” you see in it is in fact the yellow tape he twisted around the rebellious wires, which creates a highly impressive – yet very misleading – optical effect of live fire…
But - the burnt triangle in the blackened beam is very, very real.
***

‘Twas just days before Christmas, and all thru our house,
The lights were all shining, left on by my spouse;

One light switch would toggle, but the light stayed lit,
Which soon had me thinking, “That's not good, dimwit.”

Went up to the attic, to search, peer and poke,
Found filthy insulation, reeking of smoke;

My wife climbed up also, to be a backup,
When I spotted the problem: yep, a f…-up;

The source of the burning and smoldering stuff
Was the wire for the light and a nail, sure ‘nough.

Used the extinguisher and coughing some more
Down went 7 buckets of burnings galore

So late to work tomorrow, no doubt, I shall be
Re-doing the wiring, plus a light switch or three

By noon, so I hope, to work I should arrive
Unless, with this light ‘nother fire shall thrive.

Wishing You a *SAFE* And Happy Holiday –
John "I'm pretty sure I'm the one who put that nail there" and Nava “I married him?”

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