Short Circuit

There’s some kind of glitch in the matrix out here. It’s been going on for weeks - it started with a subtle, intermittent flickering of the lights in our house. The kind of thing where you’re not even sure it happened, and when you look directly at the fixtures they’re fine. When my kids were little, sometimes they’d master a new skill and want me to witness it to make it real. “Mommy, watch!” they’d say, and then they wouldn’t be able to do it, whatever it was. “Wait, I just did it, let me try again,” - and again - it wouldn’t happen. “It’s okay, I believe you,” I’d say, but of course that wasn’t good enough. You want someone else to see what’s happening and verify it. It makes it real. Kind of like that - I’d stop what I was doing and stare at the lights, and they’d just glow back at a steady frequency, or whatever the fuck lights do. They wouldn’t flicker. 

Last Wednesday night at about 11pm, it was suddenly like Poltergeist took over. All the lights in the house started flashing on and off and there was no mistaking it. The tv died, there was a popping noise inside the walls, and the smell of smoke. If you’ve ever shot a cap gun - and what kid from the 70’s has not, really - it was that kind of smoke smell. I called 911 and also SoCal Edison. The fire department came within minutes and went through the house looking for hotspots. They have cameras that can see through the walls, apparently. 

An older woman came out the front door of our neighbor’s house across the street. Turned out she was the mom of my neighbor, staying with the grandkids overnight. Lights were going crazy in their house, too. My next door neighbor didn’t come out, but their outdoor lights were flashing. Clearly there was a problem with the power lines. Or something. I know fuck-all about this stuff, so this should be fun for those of you who understand how it all works. Except even SoCal Edison doesn’t seem to understand, so maybe not.

Actual fire truck outside our house last week.

As they were leaving, a fireman said to leave the power off until SoCal Edison came. I called them back, because forty-five minutes had gone by and now the fire truck was pulling away and no SoCal Edison person had arrived. The woman I spoke with told me they’d called me back, but I’d missed the call. That kind of thing can happen when ten firemen and one firewoman are walking through your house and your neighbor’s mom is in a panic and you’re trying to help her as she’s there on the street in her nightdress, wondering if she should wake the grandkids and go to a hotel. Anyway, SoCal Edison told me they’d canceled the order because they’d checked our breaker box and equipment from their end, and everything was fine. It wasn’t a “them issue” it must be the wiring in our house. We should call a certified electrician. When I said that made no sense because all the neighbors were having problems, she said, well, sorry. It’s not us.

A certified electrician came out the next day. He said the wiring in the house was okay, but we should get a new breaker box because ours didn’t trip the way it should have. That kind of thing can cause electrical fires, and electrical fires can destroy your house in 3 minutes. There was probably also an issue with the transformer on our block since the neighbors were having problems. So, two different problems. SoCal Edison should come out. I called them back. I said I’d lived in the house for twenty years and had never asked them to come, and now I needed them to come. 

A guy showed up, his name was Guy. He was very nice. He climbed up on the roof and replaced the connectors to our weather vane. I didn’t know there were connectors on our weather vane. I thought weather vanes were for measuring the direction of the wind. I didn’t know we had a weather vane. He climbed up the pole and replaced the connectors there, too. He cleaned our lines. He could tell me with confidence he had fixed anything that could be SoCal Edison-related. He said he didn’t think we should get a new breaker box, electricians were always trying to screw you, we probably just needed a surge protector and some new circuits for high-drawing appliances. He said we might have an “open neutral” or loose connection somewhere. I made a mental note to Google “open neutral” and still haven’t. He said whatever you do, don’t use Howell Electric because they’ll jack up the price and tell you you need things you don’t need (Howell Electric is not the real name, because it turns out Guy doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. But the company that had come out was, in fact, Howell Electric so it made me feel like we needed another electrician to come out, just in case the quote was higher than it should have been).

Monday, SoCal Edison pulled up. Not Guy, some other guy. He said they were going to replace the transformer because all my neighbors were having problems. I said great, good to hear, wish I’d known that. That’s not what I said, I’m being sarcastic. But I was glad they were replacing the transformer. I told him we were also going to replace our breaker box and get an electrician to figure out where the loose connection or open neutral was. I said that so I’d sound like I know what I’m talking about, because I was starting to wonder if they were doing that thing where they assume you’re a woman and don’t know what you’re talking about. Even though, in this one particular area, I happen to not know what I’m talking about. He said don’t do that yet, let us replace the transformer because maybe that’s where the loose connection or open neutral is. Roger that, guy.

Thing is, we need a new box. The box we have is fucking old and insurance companies won’t insure a house with a box like ours. That’s about the only thing I know for sure because I did Google that, and there was a lot of information to be found. SoCal Edison cut the power, and a team worked up on that pole for four hours. Then they left. Later that night, the lights went on and off, the tv died, the fridge started beeping, whatever.

My friend said she had a contractor she’d been working with for thirteen years, and his electrician had just replaced their box. She was sure I’d love him, he’s a New Yorker and super nice. He came over Tuesday morning. He walked around, said we definitely need a new box and more circuits. He was here for a good half hour, probably more. He told me he’d write up a proposal, and his technician would call in a service order to SoCal Edison. Apparently you have to initiate the order with them, then they contact the city planner, and the city planner sends a SoCal Edison planner to make sure things are as complicated as possible. The contractor told me to call and tell the city planner I wanted to - hang on, I’m gonna check the text from the contractor - “expedite the meter spot, meaning someone comes out to verify the location of the electric panel service update to 200 amps. Thanks.” Cool, cool. So I did that.

When I was done with that call, I texted the contractor back and let him know I hadn’t gotten his proposal yet, but I’d initiated the request and asked to expedite the meter spot and here’s the confirmation number. And then he texted back and called me Jennifer, which he’d already done once, and which I’d thought was weird, but everything is weird now. So I’d just signed off Ally with a smiley face emoji the first time, because I’m texting with a man and with some men you have to be careful not to seem like you’re correcting them, even if they’re getting your name wrong. And I don’t know this guy well, so I figured, smiley face emoji. Especially since I wanted him to save our house from electrical fires and am just trying to get this damn thing done.

He didn’t acknowledge it the first time. Didn’t say, Oh, sorry, Ally, my wires got crossed. So now this was the second time he called me Jennifer, and he said he was going to have to pass on the job. Because of reasons. The reasons make no sense, because he’s walking away from a job that the other electrician quoted at 12-17k, and because I walked him all over the house and we talked about New York, and yoga, and my dog. And this is the part I’ve been avoiding, because it’s too soon to talk about it or write about it, but it’s also impossible not to tell you.

Our dog died Tuesday afternoon. I don’t even know what to say, but it’s been such a strange and horrible two weeks, it almost makes sense the whole house has gone haywire. He was fine. He was healthy, happy and good. Two weeks ago he had a lump on his belly, it was small. He’s twelve, he’s old - he gets lumps and bumps, they’re always fatty and it’s always fine. But this one was bleeding and I took him to the vet and he didn’t like the way it looked, either, so Chewy went in for surgery. My son was six when we got our dog, my daughter was four. My son named him Chewy, because Star Wars. And the lump that looked small from the outside was not small, and he came home with a 6-inch incision and 8 pills he needed - some every 24 hours, some every 12 hours, some needed to be halved, others quartered. 

The day we brought him home.

I canceled all my plans. The last two weeks I have been using a mortar and pestle to crush the pills and mix them with peanut butter, to spread that on bread and feed him pieces of peanut butter sandwich twice a day. I’ve been on the floor with him a lot, and have basically made taking care of him my main job. He was doing really well. I took him back to the vet a week ago. The incision looked great, and for a sedated dog, he was on his feet, tail wagging. The vet was happy. The biopsy hadn’t come back, but he said even if it’s cancer, many cancers in dogs are now treatable with oral meds. He said don’t tell your kids it might be cancer, let’s wait and see what it is, and what stage it is.

Sunday he didn’t want the sandwich and I had to figure out what to do since I’d crushed the pills and mixed them in already. Pouring chicken broth over the sandwich helped. I switched to mini blueberry muffins for the second dose. Monday he seemed weaker and more tired. He peed a little while he was resting, which is not a thing he does, ever. He started bleeding from his chin, and I found a new, tiny lump. I got the bleeding to stop, but I was scared and called the vet. Still no biopsy results and they didn’t want me to put him through the stress of coming in until we knew what we were dealing with. Tuesday he got up and followed me to the den like he always does, but then he made a beeline for his water. I had yoga mats on the floor so he wouldn’t wipe out on the linoleum, but he hit the part of the floor that wasn’t covered, and when he tried to catch himself, his other paw hit the linoleum, and that was it, his paws slid out and he he rested his head on his arms, like a kid, resting his head on the desk at school. He looked like he just didn’t have the energy or the will to get up, so I got on the floor with him. He peed. I cleaned him up, I cleaned the floor, I texted Lauren and Kate. 

I’m usually good in an emergency, I get weirdly calm. Once I was in my parents’ minivan - I’d driven to Connecticut to go to a yoga class with my bff Tracy, and as we were driving back to her house I hit black ice. The back end went out, I took my foot off the gas and knew not to hit the brakes, and we started heading toward a stone wall five feet in front of us. “We’re going to hit the wall, but we’re going to be okay,” I said to her. And we did, and we were, and we still laugh about how weird that was. I narrated a car crash in real time like a fucking robot. But I have not been particularly good in this emergency, because I’m too close to it. Because I really, really, really did not want him to die. 

But he did. And everything feels totally wrong, and nothing here has been solved. I’m just in the den, crying. I don’t really know how transformers work, or what exactly is happening in those power lines. Electricity and amperage and voltage and the huge, brown eyes of my dog who was just here and is now not here, are all beyond me. A delivery guy knocked on our door last night and nothing happened. The dog did not run across the house, barking. There was just silence. He isn’t in his bed in the corner of the bedroom, snoring quietly all night. He didn’t clamber up and follow me to the den this morning, and he isn’t curled at my feet right now. He was a big muppet with no spatial awareness at all, a gentle giant, a guy so substantial I’ve been trying to figure out how to haul him around the last two weeks, and now he’s not here.

I don’t know how to say goodbye to our dog, other than the way we did it, messy, crying, heartbroken, grateful. We held him, we talked to him, we remembered so many funny things he’s done over the years. We ended up huddled around him on the living room floor, which is the same way we brought him into the house twelve years ago. We FaceTimed my son, so he was there, too, talking to Chewy. I don’t know how we handle all the loss in life without short-circuiting, but I do know the love of a great dog is one of the very best things in this world. We’re going to miss you so much, buddy. Fuck this.

Friends, I love you, but I am not going to be able to do a podcast this week. I would just sob, and no one needs that. I am heading to see my son this weekend, and that will be good for all of us. I know these are very tough times. Please be gentle with yourselves. And I want to send a heartfelt thank you to Lauren Hough and Kate Mapother who really got me through this.