Take, for example, my decision to remove the hideous chandelier from the dining room and replace it with a new one. Most people could accomplish this, I reckon, in about an hour. Not me. Three hours, two Woodchucks, animal-herding that should've been filmed so I could later appear on Letterman, numerous bad swears, a trip to WTB's garage, and I was done.
First of all, everyone knows that before you begin any electrical work, you have to shut off the power to that part of the house. For me, that involves corralling four cats and a dog who don't particularly tolerate each other well into one room so that I can access the breaker box in the scary basement via a heavy trap door in the back porch floor. An intelligent person might first check to see that she was not locking the animals in a room containing items she might later need, such as a screwdriver and a cell phone. I am not that person. It was only after all five of them were in the bedroom, snarling and wailing, that I remembered the screwdriver. So I opened the door, retrieved the screwdriver, snatched up one of the escaping cats (Louis), tossed him back in the bedroom, and slammed the door. Mean Little Marie regarded me balefully from atop the kitchen table. I grabbed her, opened the bedroom door, dropped her on the bed, and almost shut the door on Libbi as she ran out. Picked up Libbi, opened the door again, spied my cellphone on the floor, shoved Libbi into the room, blocked Marie's escape attempt as I snatched up the phone, and slammed the door again.
I called my momma to let her know that I'd be descending into the scary basement and later climbing a ladder, located the appropriate breaker, flipped it off (hee hee...flipped it off...hee hee) and took down the old chandelier without too much trouble. But when I tried to hang the new chandelier, I discovered that the bolt that goes into the outlet box was too short. So I did what I always do when I run into trouble with the house and I called White Trash Bob. He said I should come over because he has a whole drawer of lamp parts and surely he had something that would work. Now I ask, you, who has a whole drawer of spare lamp parts, including a bolt that's just the right length? No one but WTB, that's who. And of course, because he just happened to be doing nothing at all on a perfectly nice Sunday afternoon, he walked back to my house with me to help me hang the new chandelier. Which didn't work after we put a couple of bulbs in it and I ran downstairs to turn the breaker back on. We took the whole thing back down again and quickly discovered that when I tightened the electrical cap, I left a little piece of the wire poking out the top. I took the cap off, re-twisted the wires, put the cap back on, ran downstairs to flip the breaker again and this time we had a working light. Wahoo.
Then WTB and I went for a walk during which he somehow tripped over the curb, fell down and dramatically rolled along the sidewalk. You'd think that since I've been answering 911 calls about all sorts of mayhem for a little over ten years that I could maybe remain calm in a situation like this. Not so much. I shrieked, "Oh my God!! Oh my God!!" He said, "How in the hell did that happen?" as he uprighted himself. I felt a little bit like the Pope's bodyguards must have felt when the Popemobile was fired upon some years ago. Not to worry, WTB is unscathed but for his pride.
And the dining room's starting to look kinda nice, don'tcha think?