The Ferrari and the Chandelier



Randy standing on the first level of scaffolding, trrying to assemble the second level.  If he lets go of the part he is holding, it will fall and crash through the windows. 



 I posted a comment on Facebook the other day about meeting a new neighbor and finding out that we grew up in the same city 3,000 miles away from Finksburg.  The posting elicted many comments from friends, to which I responded with something pithy about ours being a small world.  One friend responded that nonetheless, he would not want to paint it.  I pointed out that he is lucky he is not married to a woman who spends months poring over paint chips, has her husband paint two rooms, and then decides she hates the colors.  My friend told me this story:  For his wife, he painted a 20 x 20 room with brick walls.  There were lots of nooks and crannies to the brick, so when he painted, he exerted effort to press down with the brush.  Hard work.  He painted for 9 hours straight.  When his wife came home, she took one look at the room and immediately said, "I hate it."  The next day, my friend spent another 9 hours painting in a different color.

I confess to being a woman who unfailingly changes her mind about the paint color after a room has already been painted.  For this, and many additional reasons, my husband thinks I am High Maintenance.    When I express regret about my required level of maintenance, he invariably responds in a resigned tone, "Well, if I want to drive a Ferrari, I have to be willing to deal with the maintenance."

We have a solarium in our house that measures about 19 X 15 and has a 15-foot high ceiling.  I am decorating this room in the style of Spanish Modernist Revival (Google it; this blog post is already too long).  This style calls for a wrought-iron chandelier.  So, being an internet-research junkie, I studied articles about chandeliers and, specifically, the size required for a room of those dimensions.  For the first time in my life, What I Learned In Math Class actually came in handy.  I had to perform various calculations in order to determine the proper size of chandelier. 

In case you're curious, the formula goes something like this: 

Take the width and length of the room, add, and convert to inches.  To look proportional to the room, your chandelier of choice must be at least this many inches in diameter.  As for the height at which the chandelier should hang, in a standard room with an 8-foot high ceiling, the chandelier should hang around 6 1/2 to 7-feet off the ground.  For every additional foot of ceiling height, add three inches to the distance from the floor.

Having determined that we need a chandelier that is at least 38 inches wide, I set out to find a Spanish Modernist Revival style chandelier.  I found the perfect bronze wrought iron chandelier that was 44 inches in diameter and 46 inches in height.  It was located In Virginia, a mere two hours drive away.  One rainy Saturday, Randy and I packed the kids up in the truck, charged their DVD player, and lugged a week's worth of snacks to keep them satisfied during the trek to fetch my perfect chandelier. (The road trip with the kids merits its own blog post). 

The box fit in the back of our Pilot, but only if it were tilted up so that it totally blocked Randy's rear view and nearly touched the back of our children's heads in the second row seats.  I forgot to mention that it weighed 65 pounds. 

Six hours later, we were back home. When Randy opened the box, he discovered it contained approximately one million parts, including hand-made, hand-painted ceramic pieces delicate as eggshells, and that the instructions for assembly contained no words, just numbers and arrows.  In very small print barely discernible to the human eye.  Under extreme pressure,  compounded by the dog's humping his leg and Jagger's periodically throwing Matchbox cars at his head, Randy managed to assemble my chandelier.  Sadly, that was the easy part.

Next came the hanging.  Being a subscriber to the home-improvement magazine Family Handyman, Randy was fairly confident he could install it himself, and of course I encouraged him to do so.  And that is how Randy found himself renting 15-foot high scaffolding. The scaffolding sounded easy enough, except that he had to actually assemble the platform that would elevate him 15 feet in the air.  Guess who he had for help in assembling:  a Ferrari.  More precisely, a Ferrari who has a fear of heights.  Have you ever tried to assemble steel scaffolding with only a fearful Ferrari for assistance?   

The highpoints of the experience were: (1) Randy got stuck about 7 feet up off the ground holding a heavy piece of scaffolding up as he teetered precariously on a narrow plank.  Sure he could have let go so that he could climb down, but the heavy metal equipment would surely have toppled over and killed me or the kids, or fallen through the windows.  (As an aside, I suppose that if the scaffolding had caused my untimely demise, Randy could have stopped the chandelier project.  But let's not go there.). We had to make an emergency call to our friend who helped put up the second level of scaffolding so that Randy could come down.  (2) One of the aforementioned delicate eggshell pieces broke when the chandelier toppled over (but thankfully didn't fall off) while resting atop the scaffolding.  Randy superglued it back together.

The following day, Randy and two buddies hung the chandelier while I took Skyler and Jagger to Skyler's chorus practice.  There were two of them wiring the chandelier for an hour, while the third stayed on the floor ready to dial 911 in the event of a scaffolding emergency.  When I got home, the trio was already enjoying a celebratory beer in the garage, and they proudly told me the chandelier was hanging.  I rushed over to the solarium, eager to behold my cherished lighting fixture.  It truly was a beauty to behold!  Unfortunately, it was also a beauty that I could hold:  It was hung too low. 

Randy confessed something to me when he was up on the scaffolding on the first day:  he doesn't care for heights.  Then, when I told him the chandelier was too low, he told me that when he and his buddy were up on the scaffolding carrying the 65-pound chandelier, arms outstretched above their heads for an hour as they hooked up the wiring, the scaffolding shook violently under the weight of two grown men and one heavy lighting fixture, and he was scared to death.  I understand that his recounting of the harrowing experience was meant to discourage any requests to re-do the hanging of the chandelier.  But when I stand beneath the chandelier, it touches my face. Surely, even a Honda would ask that it be re-hung.

After I read the Facebook story about my friend's repainting the brick walls, I told Randy that it turns out I am actually not high maintenance at all!  Although I confess to be the type of woman who always hates the colors she picked for the walls as soon as the painting is completed, I have never actually made Randy repaint.  I happily announced to Randy that I am not a Ferrari, and not even a Honda.  I am more like a bike.  The look on his face told me that he begs to differ. 

Whenever I tell someone my most recent home decorating fiasco, they ask why we didn't hire someone to hang the fixture for us. It would be very expensive, for one thing, and we have a lot of other rooms left to decorate. But I have to admit, too, that I enjoy the process, and the stories that I can share as a result of the decorating nightmares.  As owners of Ferraris like to say, "It's about the ride.  The destination is just an excuse."

My How You've Grown

My, how time flies.  It seems like it as only yesterday that I was following Skyler's bus to McDonogh for the first day of summer camp.  The memory had not even receded in my mind, when, on the first day of summer camp last week, Skyler asked, without the slightest hint of amusement in her voice, "Mommy, you're not planning to follow the bus again, are you?" 

I tried to sound indignant at the mere suggestion that I would do such a crazy thing.  It was acceptable when she was only five years old and it was her very first time to go to summer camp, but for God's sake she is six now.  "Pfhhh,"  I snorted as I tossed my hair, "Of course not." 

Truth is, the thought did cross my mind.  But the thought was fleeting and lasted only several days.  After all, I have grown up as a parent. 

Yeah, yeah, I know, I should be gushing about the ways in which my kids have grown up, etc., but this is MY blog, and I want to gush about the ways in which I have become a more mature mommy.  Although I considered following the bus, I didn't.  In fact, I made a point of driving away from the drop-off spot and onto the main road ahead of the bus, just in case Skyler looked back.  I was not going to give her the satisfaction of thinking even for even a nanosecond that I was behind her bus.  I nearly got myself killed making a left hand turn in front of oncoming traffic so that I could be securely in front of that bus. 

Part of my fear about putting my kid on the bus for a full day of summer camp has its genesis in the guilt I feel about not being the kind of mom that keeps her kids at home, safely ensconced within the walls of our abode, busy with creative and edifying activities, spending days dotted with trips to the zoo and library and pool, fed with homemade nutritious lunches and snacks. My friend says that the guilt/angst of being a working mom really began with the industrial revolution, when people began to work away from home in factories rather than out on the field on their farms.  (Yes, I know stay-at-home (SAHM) moms have their own set of worries/fears.  But, again, this is MY blog.  I suppose it goes without saying that I love my kids more than life itself.  But I have to work for economic as well as psychological reasons.  The economic reasons are obvious.  But the psychological ones are a bit more complicated.

I was prepared to do some internet research on the "complicated psychological motivations" for electing to work outside the home when I got distracted by a child-related disaster needing my immediate attention.  I don't remember exactly what the urgent event was, but take your pick among the following representative options: (1)Jagger dumped out Skyler's neatly organized box of colored pencils for sketching fashion designs; (2) Skyler couldn't find her favorite plastic cup; (3) Jagger and Skyler climbed into the hamper which serves as their "boat" and couldn't get out.  You get the picture. 

In the midst of attending to the latest domestic catastrophe, it dawned on me that I didn't need to conduct any research.  The "complicated psychological motivation" for working outside the home can be summarized pretty succinctly:  If I stay home to take care of the kids all day, I will lose my sanity.  I'm willing to bet all the shoes in my closet that summer camp is more fun than staying home with a mother who has lost her marbles.