Mr. Sparky, More Like Mr. Sparkless

My hands hurt.

My hands hurt because this reader and writer has been working with her hands. I have cuts and band-aids on the majority of my fingers. Swiping the iPhone has become an increasingly difficult task. But I've also gained confidence. I have trimmed windows and laid tile and I now know the difference between mortar and grout.

The last step to the kitchen remodel was to hang our new light fixtures that I bought eons ago. I made an appointment with Mr. Sparky, an electrician chain. Mr. Sparky quoted us $1,400 to replace working light fixtures with working light fixtures.

"The handyman I spoke to said he would do it for $200," I stammered.

"Yes, there is a market for handymen," Mr. Sparky replied. "Do you have a working smoke detector?"

Abraham--dear, sweet Abraham who doesn't know when people are being rude to him--chippered that yes, we do have a smoke detector.

"Does it have a new battery?"

"Well--" Abraham began.

"Yes," I interrupted. "It works great. And you just insulted us, so you can get out."

Mr. Sparky grabbed his tool box. "I hope you know a great architect who can rebuild your house after it burns down."

WHAT. I slammed the door on him. I cannot believe I invited this company into my home to have them treat me this way. I challenged him on his price and his go-to response was to tell me my house was going to burn down? Your house is supposed to be your safe haven from the outside world, and this company just trampled all over it. We are in our 30s--we will need electricians for about 60 more years--and Mr. Sparky just ensured that we will never use them or recommend them.

I was outraged. "WHO DOES THIS TRADE SCHOOL HIPPIE THINK HE IS?!" I shouted at Abraham. I ripped open the box to the track lighting. White wire connects to white wire. Black wire connects to black wire. Mr. Sparky can shove his $1,400 bill up his asshole.

"Please calm down." Abraham pleaded with me. "I don't want you messing with electrical work."

"I CAN DO ANYTHING I PUT MY MIND TO!" I was both antagonized and cocky. "I'M SMART. I CAN BE A DOCTOR OR A LAWYER. I CAN HANG THIS LIGHT FIXTURE."

"Just wait an hour before you start."

"STOP TELLING WHAT TO DO. I CAN DO ANYTHING I WANT."

I put the light fixture together. I flipped a breaker and dragged a small step ladder into the kitchen. I unscrewed the ceiling fan and started disconnecting wires as Abraham watched nervously. White from white. Black from black. I noticed the grounding wire was never connected to the box; I was already smarter than the person who installed this fan 20 years ago.

And then there was a blue wire. The blue wire was not in the single YouTube video I watched. And this blue wire was connected to the pull-chain that controlled the fan setting. The only way I could figure to detach this blue wire was to break the little plastic box it was inserted into. That or cut it with wire cutters, which we don't own.

Then I got a headache. I was hungry. It was 2 p.m. and I had cut the power off to the kitchen.  I put those plastic toothpaste caps on all the exposed wires and flipped the breaker back on so I could make soup.

***

And that is the story of why we have had zero lighting in our kitchen for the last 5 days.

"Can we call the handyman now?" Abraham gently asked. "Or do you still want to do this yourself?"

Everything but the Kitchen Sink

We lasted 30 days without plumbing in our kitchen. On Friday our contractor hung the remaining cabinets, installed our granite counter top, and hooked up our new sink and faucet. It felt surreal to sit in our new kitchen and eat Lucky Charms out of a paper bowl and see the changes. The kitchen should still be 32 years old, not days old.

When I was shopping for the the new kitchen, I was not shopping for me. I picked out whatever was the most popular style of cabinet and variety of granite to help the resale value of the condo. But my style is still present. Over the weekend we shopped for backsplash and lighting. I stared at tile after tile, hating everything. Everything looked cheap to me. The only thing I liked were stainless steel subway tiles, which is what we bought. At home Abraham took a square foot of tiles and held them up between the counter and the cabinets, and I think it looks really, really nice. These subway tiles are the only thing we paid full-price for; everything else we bargain shopped.

Abraham, my mom, and me craned our necks at the lighting options at Lowe's. I was insistent on track lighting because we desperately needed task lighting. We saw a model we all liked, but we couldn't find the box. An employee told us that the model had been discontinued long ago, but they never took down the fixture. My mother informed them that we would have no problem buying the display model, so the guy huffed up the ladder and unwired the fixture from the circuit. Then he gave us 60% off the cost. Another great deal for us.

As if we weren't gluttons enough for punishment, we went range shopping to try to get a Labor Day deal. I fell in love with a 5-burner, gas-operated Frigidaire convection oven. The prices weren't as low as I hoped for, but they did offer 36-month 0% interest on appliances. Abraham already had the store card, and I giggled when he financed the $770.00 oven for 36 months because it seems completely absurd.

Next on our list is to hire someone to install our light fixtures and beg my mother to come over and help us lay the tile for our backsplash. We also need to buy molding for the kitchen window to dress it up a bit. Then sometime in the future we need a new dishwasher, but I am so completely exhausted by this renovation that I am in no hurry. My 4-day weekend was spent in go mode. We haven't put our dishes away or set anything up yet; our entire kitchen is still on the floor of the guest bedroom. I am ready for everything to be done, but I am exhausted from putting in the work.

Hello, is it me you are looking for

I'm here, I still read blogs every week day, but I've just become more of a lurker. I've spent this year reading like a maniac. I've read over 30 books so far, which I feel has made me more passive: reading instead of writing. Lurking instead of commenting. It's a lot less effort.

I've also been knitting most nights of the week. It's meditation to me. I kept my promise when I wrote that I was going to maximize my savings and spend the rest on yarn. I'm adding hand-dyed wool skeins to my stash about every two weeks, which is a heck of a lot faster than I knit. And when I lost some of my knitting needles in the move last year, I bought all new wood sets. I found a wood table beside a dumpster one day: a nice table that had folding leaves on either side. It just needed a little TLC. I immediately loaded it into my car and took it home. I painted it silver. Now I have my very own craft corner in the spare bedroom. It makes me happy to have my own space.

I never heard the term "DINK" before a couple a weeks ago. Dual Income, No Kids. Abraham and I took our DINK money and are renovating our kitchen. Abraham's condo is a year younger than I am and has never been updated. We are getting new wood cabinets to maximize the small kitchen space and granite counter tops. We are also upgrading the sink and faucet; we haven't made a decision about the oven and dishwasher yet, but we feel it's probably not far behind. So far we've been without a kitchen for 20 days and counting, but we're hoping it will be done by September. We sacrificed time in favor of cost savings. (We also sacrificed a little customer service in favor of cost savings.) And genius me asked the contractor to save some of our old wood cabinets to put up in our laundry room, so the laundry room is getting a free upgrade as well.

And all of this is still less stressful than planning a wedding! We still have four more weddings this year, and I'm a bridesmaid in Mel's and Jenna's. By February of next year every single member of my friend group will be married. It really did happen that quickly.

I'd like get away for a weekend with Abraham. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in plans and events that I feel we haven't had a lot of time to ourselves. I'm thinking Charleston, since Abraham has never been. But a part of me also really wants to go to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. There is a ton to do there, including Dollywood. Dolly Parton has a theme park and I've never been. In the next six months we already have trips planned for Chicago and Nashville and another cruise through the Caribbean.

I've slowly been working through the conversion process to Judaism. When a friend found out I was converting, she confided to me that she's always felt like she should be Jewish, even when she was little. My story gave her the confidence to begin her own conversion. We are going through different rabbis and synagogues, so our experiences are very different. She also has a partner and a child who aren't Jewish, so she's going through some difficulties that I'm not. The other day someone made a Jewish joke that I understood and Abraham didn't, and I was so proud of myself. So I feel like my studies have been effective thus far.

The Femme Fatale, my beloved Siberian Husky, is beginning to show signs of age. She's 13.5 years old, and I've started her on glucosamine for the touch of arthritis she has in her hind legs. I always cheer for her when she treks up stairs now. She also has two lumps: one lipoma on her hind leg and one soft tissue lump on her front elbow. Neither are cancer or bother her, so I don't want to put her through so many surgeries. She's still happy and plays and loves to eat and go for walks, and I hope she stays that way.

So that's what I've been up to. I started a couple of blog posts about the wedding itself. Maybe I'll get around to those one day.

Safe and Sound

Auth note: I had originally written this in October 2013, but I didn't publish it because I thought I was being morose or overly dramatic. Then during Passover, a man affiliated with the KKK walked into a Jewish community center in Kansas city and killed two people. Then he crossed the street and entered a Jewish assisted-living center and killed another person. My brother-in-law knew people trapped inside the JCC during the shooting. I no longer feel dramatic, just sickened.

There is this man who lives adjacent to Abraham and me. This man regularly dresses like Uncle Sam and stands on the side of the road with a JESUS LOVES YOU sign. All he does is wave, point to the person driving, and point to the sign. Jesus loves you!

It's hard to reconcile when you've decided to convert to Judaism.

I'm terrfied for the day when he points to me and then points to his sign. I'm afraid for the day I'll have to say no thanks. And I'm afraid for the look on his face when he learns that he lives next to a couple of Jews.

I think he'll be okay. He preaches love. He's always smiling and waving at the mailbox. Abraham is annoyed by him, but I think the world could use more of him. People whose primary message is love.

He's not like the preachers who would stand on corners of my college campus with signs that told us all we were going to hell. That man would point to a girl wearing a spaghetti-strapped shirt on a hot, spring day, point to his Bible, and condemn her to hell for dressing like a prostitute. The girl kept her head down as she hurried to higher education, her bookbag pounding against her back.

As a Christian I was incensed by this man. I wanted to run up to him and shove him. Yes, an eye for an eye, but did he stop reading the Bible he was thumping before he got to the New Testament? Did he not know about love and acceptance? Jesus dined with a prostitute.

Safety was an early discussion at my Derech Torah class. "We live in a post-9/11 world," the rabbi teaching the class warned us. Synagogues hire armed police to protect Jews as they attend High Holiday services. The building that houses our class is behind an 8-foot tall fence with a security gate with a security guard with surveillance cameras and buzzed entry into the building with a sign-in desk. Their budget could afford heightened security or mezuzahs (a religious symbol) on every door; they forwent the religious symbol. When we met with a rabbi to see if he would marry us, once again we had to appear on video cameras and get buzzed into the synagogue. The doors are always locked.

Abraham doesn't think much of this because it's what he's always known. For me though, it's alarming. I never thought twice about Easter or Christmas services--I'm not even sure I locked the car doors--but now I smile politely at the man with the gun as I enter the doors of a synagogue. Who would want to hurt a bunch of people minding their own business?

I felt threatened by the men with the signs on my college campus when, in the broadest sense of the term, I was one of them.

What would they do to me now?

Rx

Got my laboratory results back from my doctor. I am completely 100% healthy.

Healthy and cold and exhausted. Yay. 

A Pretty Penny

I looked at my bills this month and smiled. SMILED. Because for the first time in about 10 years, I'm feeling a little financially flush. I worked hard and paid off my car a year early. I carry no credit card debt. The new bedroom set I bought when I moved in with Abraham is now paid off. And the wedding has passed, which feels like the biggest cha-ching. 

So what now? 

The first thing I did was check my savings and retirement contributions and made sure I was contributing 10% of my income to each. My savings did take a hit during the last year, so I'd like to replace the funds in that account. I never let my retirement slack, so I'm in good shape there. I also called my stockbroker and invested about $4,000 of an old inheritance. We lived the good life on our honeymoon, and I'm anxious to ditch working for a living and feast in Mexico, ASAP.  

I also bought all of the things. The honeymoon was the final nail in the coffin for my beautiful 10-year-old luggage, so I spent $300 on new ones: dazzling bags on wheels in pinks and purples. I managed to get through last summer with three pairs of shoes, including one pair of flip-flops, so I rewarded myself by doubling the amount of summer shoes: Leather-strapped Born's and crocheted Toms' and work flats from Loft. Throw in two new dresses from Forever 21 because I just can't quit it. 

I like shopping, I feel good when I shop, but I don't want to be burdened with material objects. I don't want to work to maintain my possessions. I think I'm at the point where I would like a few high quality items instead a bunch of little things. I am a professional of the little things though, and Amazon and Forever 21 know it. 

I think the answer to my dilemma is to increase my savings contributions: maybe aim for 15 - 25% instead of 10%. Maybe maximize my Roth to the limit of $5,500. Start a house-repair fund, a child fund, a vacation fund, a something fund.

But I'm worried because I am so good at shopping, and I know what fun it is. I'm giddy when I open a box of sock yarns that I purchased and I fondle the soft skeins in brilliant colors. To me, that is a high.

I'm at such a rare point in my life, and I don't want to squander the opportunity. How do you balance a Pinterest life with a sound life that is financially secure? And if I do save 30% of my income, can I spend the remaining 70% on yarn and dresses?

Zzz

People ask us how being married is. Whether it's any different to the life we had before.

I always respond it's exactly the same.

Abraham says he likes married life better. And when the other person is done singing, "Aww," he qualifies that he is happier because I'm no longer stressed 24/7 about the wedding.

In real life, marriage is expensive, if you base it on cost per day for what you spent on the wedding. Marriage is also tiring. I've taken four-hour naps on every day that I'm not working. Last Sunday Abraham appeared above me from the couch. "Are you feeling okay? Because you've been asleep for five hours."

I stretched and yawned. "I feel like I could sleep another five."

"Well you'll be able to when we go to bed in a few hours."

Maybe I'm just recovering from all the stress I placed on myself. Or maybe my thyroid meds aren't as effective as they used to be. I find myself sensitive to cold, my teeth chattering when it's 68*F inside the house.

I should probably get myself to the doctor to get checked. Right after this nap.