Fun with Electricity

You know that nagging “I’m forgetting something” feeling when you have the ability to remember that you are, indeed, forgetting something, but you can’t recall what that illusive ‘something’ is?

Joey and I have had that feeling through this whole project. It was more of a feeling that we knew, with the hundreds of projects and millions of things to keep in mind, that we would inevitably forget something. Something would be missed and the realization that we had missed it would occur at a very inopportune time.

And that inopportune time occurred last night at 9:00 p.m. when we found that ‘something’ we had missed.

Our electrician, a.k.a my dad, come over to hook up the lights in our almost-completed master bath. Things began smoothly. He fussed with a few wires and the light over the shower was illuminated. Next came the over-head light/exhaust fan. He fussed with the wires and…nothing. No light, no fan. He moved the wires around, mumbled to himself, stared at the light/fan and moved the wires around more. No light, no fan. Something was wrong. And he needed access to the wires that were connected to the light/fan. The wires that were covered with freshly painted drywall on one side and recently installed subfloor on the other side. One of them had to be opened up.

I stared at my father, dumb-founded, not believing that we actually had to undo one of these “this-was-not-easy-to-finish” projects. And my stubborn nature wasn’t helping matters. You see, when I make a decision about something, I tend to not like that decision to be screwed with. And I had decided that there was no way the wiring for the light/fan was so screwed up that we needed to pry up the attic subfloor. And even as Joey and my dad began prying at the floor, I continued questioning if it was necessary.

“Wait,” I cried, as they prepared to saw through a piece of subfloor that had required 45 minutes to install.

“Is this really necessary? Are you really, really certain that there is nothing else wrong with the light? Really? You’re certain? I mean seriously…we really have to do this? Really? You’re certain?”

My father turned to me with a calm and conclusive look in his eyes. “Yes, Elizabeth. We need to remove the floor.”

“Shit,” I thought. “He said ‘Elizabeth’ and he has that look on his face. There’s no way I’m going to win this battle.”

“Fine,” I conceded, and plugged my ears as the scream from the circular saw slicing through my most favorite piece of subfloor filled the attic.

Once the box for the light/fan was revealed, we all peered in at it. I, of course, was convinced it was going to be just fine, proving that there was never a need to pull up the subfloor. My dad reached in to check out the wiring in the box.

And he pulled up wires…that were connected to nothing. The light/fan had never been wired when we hastily covered it with subfloor and drywall.

“Well, I guess we really did need to pull up the floor to fix it, huh?” I said with a smile.

Within moments, the light/fan was connected and working.

And we agreed not to screw that piece of subfloor back down until all the rest of the wiring was checked.

The three of us feel pretty embarrassed that we overlooked wiring the main light fixture to our bathroom. We’re chalking it up to having too much on our plates and trying to move through it too quickly. And you know what happens when you plow through a really full plate…you get heartburn. And that’s what we got.

But, my dad and Joey fixed the problem, which I guess makes them…antacid? Wow. I bet that’s the first time they’ve been included in a metaphor that involves both heartburn and antacid.

So, now we’re just hoping there isn’t another forgotten ‘something’ lurking behind the next inopportune corner. I’m sure there is. Maybe it will just be that I forgot to buy milk at the store and I realize it while scarfing down a piece of rich chocolate cake.

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