But no.
Nothing is that simple in this goddamned house.
“The four-packs of floodlight bulbs are in the hall closet,” I told him.
“I’m not using a regular bulb out there,” he replied. “I’m installing an EcoSmart LED light. I figure if I’m going to all that trouble of replacing it, I want a bulb that’s long-lasting. I’ve got to go to Home Depot to pick one up.”
“Can’t you just save yourself a trip and stick in a regular bulb and take that time to cut the lawn?” I asked, mentally adding at least an hour and a half to the task, since he’d involved the Depot.145
“Being able to see the garage is a priority. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said.
Two hours later, Mac arrived home and was, ostensibly, ready to tackle the task at hand. However, I had to wait another fifteen minutes while he “strapped on his bags,” because God knows you can’t change a lightbulb without donning thirty pounds of tool belt. There’s got to be a joke about how many do-it-yourselfers it takes to change a lightbulb, but my sense of humor was such that I probably wouldn’t have appreciated it had I heard it.
When he was finally ready to climb the ladder, I positioned myself at the bottom, primed to hand him stuff as needed. While he removed the glass around the lantern and unscrewed the old bulb, I inspected the new one. That thing didn’t look like the regular kind of bulb you’d see popping up in thought bubbles over cartoon characters’ heads when they got bright ideas about how to best roadrunners and wascally wabbits. Instead the bulb had a flat glass surface in the middle that was surrounded by what appeared to be white plastic gills or spokes. Odd.
“What’s so special about this?” I asked.
“This bulb is extra bright and environmentally friendly, and it’s guaranteed to last five years. According to the manufacturer, it should save us two hundred dollars over its life span. That’s why it costs a little more,” Mac told me.
My ears instantly pricked up. “How much more?”
“A lot more,” he admitted.
I did not care for the sound of that. “How much?”
Mac appeared to be very interested in the fixture when he answered me. “Forty-five dollars.”
I practically crushed the bulb with my bare hands when I heard that. “Are you shitting me? Forty-five dollars? For a frigging lightbulb? Are you high or do you just hate money? I could buy groceries for the week with forty-five bucks! For two of these bulbs, I could pay for a week of landscaping! Forty-five dollars is insane!”
Mac steadied himself against the garage. “Can you stop shaking the ladder, please? We need it, it will last, end of story. My dad always says buy cheap, buy twice. This may not sound like a great idea now, but when we have five full years of a clear, cost-effective lighting solution, you’ll thank me.”
I snorted. “Yeah, talk to me in five years about that.”
“Hand it up, please; I’m ready for it.” I did and then he screwed the Hope diamond of lightbulbs into the socket.“Okay, now go into the garage and flip the switch.”
What I thought was, Oh, I’ll flip something, all right.
What I said was, “Got it.”
I entered the garage, located the yellowed switch plate, and flipped the first switch on the right. “Done.”
I walked back out as Mac called to me, “Mia! Flip the switch!”
“I did.”
“Clearly you didn’t, because the light’s still off. You must have hit the wrong switch.”
“No, I did the one on the far right. You probably just have a bum bulb.”
With a tad more condescension than I’d deem appropriate, Mac said, “Mia, Home Depot doesn’t sell defective forty-five-dollar bulbs. Now please get back in there and flip all the switches.”
So I did. . and nothing happened.
Mac didn’t believe me, so he got down from the ladder and kept trying all the switches himself. “I don’t get it,” he said, and then he snapped his fingers. “Oh, wait. I figured it out. This fixture has got to be thirty years old. I’m sure that’s the problem. I’m going back to the Depot to buy a nice new wall-mount outdoor lantern. I’ll be back soon.”
“What about the lawn?” I asked, trailing behind him.
“I’ll do it as soon as I’m done with this,” he promised, and I mentally braced myself for the inevitable arrival of the “You Need to Either Mow or Buy a Goat” petition.
Another hour and a half went by before Mac finally returned with a new lantern. “What do you think?” he asked, proudly displaying the two-hundred-and-thirty-dollar Beaumont fruitwood fixture.
“I think you should try a regular bulb before you go to all the effort of installing a new lantern. My way costs four dollars. Your way costs, so far, two hundred and seventy-five bucks. Not including labor.”
“I’m not having this discussion with you,” he fumed, stalking off toward the garage. So I went back to my office to work.146 From my vantage point, I observed him burning all the available daylight in trying to get his fancy new light/lantern combination to work.
Yesterday he spent his morning installing a new switch that cost only four dollars but took three hours. After this bit of fecklessness, he replaced the whole junction box with zero success, and today he plans on rewiring the whole garage.
You know what? I’m just going to mow the lawn myself.
I change into old sneakers, cutoff sweatpants, and an ancient sorority T-shirt, stick in my earbuds, and select my sounds-of-the-nineties playlist as I plod down to the garage. I glower at the lantern and it’s all I can do not to throw a couple of landscaping rocks at it.
We inherited a lawn mower with the house, and like everything else here, it’s completely antiquated. Mac cleaned the blade and filled it with gas and he says it works, but considering it looks like a prop from the movie Road Warrior, I’m a bit skeptical. I wheel it down the driveway and let myself into the gated part of the yard.
I bend across the rusty motor and give the toggle dealie a tentative yank. I don’t want to pull too hard, because I feel like the rope will break. Nothing happens, so I pull harder. The engine sputters to life and then dies, so I probably have no choice but to tug harder. I yank the toggle with all my might and the mower roars to life. And I do mean roar. Even with my iPod up full blast, I can’t make out a single word Alanis Morissette is singing, so I turn it off. I don’t need to hear her to understand exactly how ironic this whole situation is. I do leave the earbuds in to protect my hearing.
Cutting the grass isn’t as hard as I anticipated, because this mower surprisingly has one of the self-propelling features. I thought I’d have to push this aging bucket of bolts like Sisyphus and his boulder, but really it’s more a matter of steering. What’s frustrating is that the grass is so long that I have to empty the bag every five minutes.
Also, apparently since we no longer have landscapers, we no longer have people who are paid to pick up dog crap. I retrieve what I can see, but due to the height of the grass, most of those treasures are hidden. Every time I run over poop, the pile explodes into tiny shards that spray me in the legs. I figure the tetanus shot I had last month will protect me from any doody-borne pathogens, so I keep going.
By the time I complete this chore, I’ve filled six brown paper landscaping bags, and now I have to haul them all the way up to the curb for pickup.
I’d ask for Mac’s help, but he’s taken off for the Depot again. I’d simply leave the bags for him, but since I want this done now,147 I’m stuck humping everything a tenth of a mile down the drive. The gravel grates so hard against the bottom when I drag them that a couple of the bags burst and then I have to rake up all the clippings and shards o’ crap before it occurs to me to use the wheelbarrow.