The Eye-Blink Salvation

I can’t believe it… After five years, my a/c is working the way I expected it to! FIVE YEARS!!

So here’s the scoop. When we made aliyah, we moved into an apartment with central a/c, which is a luxury here in Israel, FYI. Most apartments have single units placed in different parts of the house. When we moved in, our neighbor showed us how to work the remote for the a/c, and how to set it on timer during Shabbat.

I was like, “Timer? Fo’ rizzle?” What happened to just setting it at a certain temperature and it will go on and off automatically? She looked at me like she could see my third eye. Three years and many, many aggravating Shabbats later, we moved into our current apartment. This one doesn’t have central a/c, but the remote is still the same. So the owner once again showed us how to use the timers.

Believe me, I didn’t keep my complaints to myself. That would be impossible in any case. I brought this issue up in many, many conversations I’ve had with people over the past five years. I couldn’t understand, for the life of me, why the a/c manufacturers didn’t use their common sense and put in a setting for the temperature. What drove me even more crazy was that there is such a setting when you want to heat the house! There is no timer option for heating, just a temperature that you want to reach.

No one was able to answer me. Not one person. Now I’m wondering if there is seriously something wrong with everyone. Have people’s brains begun melting from the HAARP-induced global warming?  Maybe they’re suffering from too much radiation poisoning from their smart phones? Could the vaccine-induced accumulation of thimerosal (a.k.a., mercury) and aluminum in their brains have triggered early-onset dementia?

During the week, it wasn’t a big deal to turn the air on and off every five minutes, as long as the remote was within my lazy reach. But when it wasn’t, I was wishing that my arm would magically lengthen, like Batya’s did when she tried to fish baby Moshe out of the Nile. If I had a magically expanding arm, I would use it for all kinds of important uses, like to grab a snack out of the fridge, or to turn off my bedroom light after I’ve already begun falling asleep. I could even smack my kids from across the house. That would be so cool. And so much more efficient. You see, I’m not lazy. I’m just very, very energy-conscious. Don’t want to aggravate the global warming, you know.

Back to my a/c drama. Every Shabbat during the summertime, the dining room would go from sweltering to freezing in two minutes flat. Then, when the timer turned the air off, it would go back to sweltering in 30 seconds flat. It was like my dining room was bipolar. Not a great way to enjoy your Shabbat meal.

So how did the solution magically come about? Actually, it had nothing to do with figuring out how to work the stupid remote. It had to do with the ultimatum I gave my husband: either he gets the owner to put a/c units in each bedroom, or we’re going to consider moving to a new place. Central a/c was completely out of the question.

I know. You’re like, “Hold up. No a/c in the bedrooms? Where are you living, in Gehinnom??” I had to be such a nudnik until I got him to even speak with the owner about it. I told him that this is 2016 and we live like civilized people. I was tired of sleeping in a room full of hot, stuffy air. And I felt terrible that the kids were suffering, too.

Miracle of miracles, the owner agreed to do it! Of course, he raised our rent, so I guess it’s not such a big miracle. Anyhow, I started calling around for quotes, and at the end of a conversation with one a/c guy, I happened to ask him why I can’t just set the air to a certain temperature and have it go on and off by itself. He told me, “Of course you can. Just put it on the drip setting. It looks like a drop of water on the remote.”

OMG, ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

This must be the best-kept secret in all of Beit Shemesh! I am still amazed that so few people know about this. If you do, consider yourself one of the lucky ones!

So there are three main lessons I learned from these past five years of living in the Dark Ages.

One: My suffering compelled me to try and find a solution – and, in finding that solution, another solution presented itself without me even looking for it! Does that make any sense? Great. It’s like two salvations for the price of one.

Two: Hashem creates the cure before the illness. The solution is always there; you just need to be blessed enough to see it. When the time is right, Hashem will open your eyes and you’ll indeed see that the solution was there all along.

Three: Salvation can come in an instant.

Bonus lesson: It pays to be a nudnik.

But here’s the most important lesson. Thanking Hashem for the challenges in your life is the short-cut to receiving the salvation! So start now! Read The Garden of Gratitude and spend 30 minutes a day thanking Hashem for everything! Now I’m wondering what would have happened if I had thanked Hashem for this problem 5 years ago. I’m such a slow learner…