Let there be Light

When Jerel and I first got together, there was definitely electricity between us, but lately it's started to fade . . . It started about 3 months ago when I decided to do some rewiring of our electrical outlets and ended last week with us having no electricity at all in our upstairs. My first room was the nusery. Jerel had it painted with white trim, so obviously our outlets needed to be changed from ugly, non-matching off-white to beautiful new matching white-white. Jerel thought the whole project was completely unnecessary, but that's because he's a boy and doesn't know about the importance of matching--he will even wear a black belt with brown shoes! Anyway, I did the first outlet and it worked great so then I did the rest of the outlets in the room and then nothing worked. I called my brother-in-law Jeff and he gave me some things to try but nothing worked. So then I did what any pregnant woman would do--I gave up and dramatically threw myself on the bed in tears. When Jerel got back from running errands he tightened up some of the wires and then everything worked.

Well, I wasn't about to be outdone by a boy, so next I did our office/sewing room and everything went perfectly! I also replaced our bathroom outlets from regular outlets to the kind that stop working if you drop your blowdryer in a sink full of water. By this point it was clear I was pretty much an electrical genius. After that things got tricky. See, we have several three-way lightswitches (one light that's controlled by two different switches) as well as some outlets that are controlled by a light switch. This is where my expertise started to get fuzzy. This is also why it turned into a 3-month project. I'd try it and it wouldn't work. So I'd ask our maintenance guy at work the next day, then wait a week for my frustration to fade, then try it again. Then it wouldn't work again and I'd ask the guys at Home Depot and they would treat me like a little kid who doesn't know anything about anything and then I'd try again.

Anyway, after several months, last Saturday everything finally worked! It was fabulous having the electricity back! But it didn't last. I got up Sunday morning and things were still working, but an hour later when Jerel got up we were back to having no power. Ugh! At this point Jerel took over the project. After several phone calls to his cousin Jason (during which Jerel didn't mention even once that it was all my fault, which I thought was nice) Jerel discovered that one of the outlets had shorted out (which I don't think could've been my fault, right?) and after he replaced that one we were back in business. Whew!

I know this is way too long of a post for such a silly story, but it has been a long, traumatic couple of months around here. Also, I thought I should let everyone know that if you need any electrical work done I'd be glad to help...just make sure you are wiling to go at least 3 months without electricity and won't mind not having any electricity when it's all done!