Who turned out the lights?

After a very eventful weekend, it’s been a pretty slow week. Work, work, work, work, work. I’m not sure how one is supposed to keep up a lively and entertaining blog with daily posts when there’s not too much going on – certainly nothing to compare to the GREAT LIZARD HUNT!

But, we are supposed to go to the beach this weekend, so perhaps by Sunday or Monday I’ll have an entry about the 2008 “sand crab” season in Laguna. Beat THAT for excitement, “Deadliest Catch,” I dare you!

(How awesome is that show, by the way? I Tivo this show every week. Captain Sig = yummy!)

Okay, splashed some cold water on my face and I’ll be fine now.

Let’s see what else happened this week? Oh, right, there’s the completely enthralling saga of the “lightbulbs that cannot be changed” that’s going on at my house right now. Y’see, there are only two lights that light up my staircase. Both of them have burned out bulbs right now. This means that the staircase must be traversed in the dark (or with a flashlight). Now, normally, one wouldn’t think this would be a big deal because I’m a grown woman who quit being afraid of the dark a long time ago, right?

Right.

Mostly.

If you’ve read my book reviews and any of the books they refer to, then you’ll have noticed I read a lot of stuff about things that go bump in the dark. Scary, monstery things. Scary, monstery things that might not be visible when you look right at them, but who sorta kinda make the skin of the back of your neck crawl when you have to walk up the stairs in the dark, alone, at night, because you NEVER KNOW…there MIGHT be something there if you just turned around fast enough you’d see it. Except you don’t want to see it, but if you don’t look it might get you so you run really fast up the stairs except you are a natural klutz and this often results in falling and injuries of the painful kind.

And that’s just me.

Then add the 5 year old – who really IS still afraid of the dark – to the mix and you begin to see my problem.

So, I can see you screaming at the screen “why don’t you just change the lightbulbs, dumbass?”

And you make a good point.

Except that to change them, I’d have to be able to REACH them. Which I can’t. Because the brainiacs who designed my house decided to put one of these lights in the section of ceiling that is what they call “cathedral.” This is just a fancy word for REALLY EFFING HIGH CEILING which means that, at 5’5” tall, I can’t reach the lightbulb. I can’t even reach it by standing on a chair. I can’t reach it by standing on the ladder that I have.

The other bulb is at the top of the stairs, and is not quite as high, but it’s not over the landing where you could actually PUT a ladder and have it be stable. No, it’s over the stairs so there’s no way to set the ladder up.

Sigh.

After two weeks of the kidlet and I racing each other up the stairs in the dark (because, y’know, slowest one gets eaten by the possibly imaginary but possibly not, monster), I’d had enough. I determined to tackle this challenge head on by going to Lowe’s for help.

BIG MISTAKE.

See, women (fair warning – I’m about to set the feminist movement back about 50 years) do not belong at Lowe’s (or Home Depot or any other store of that ilk). It’s like a guy barging into a women’s restroom. It’s just not a good thing.

Especially not a woman like me. I mean, if you’ve read the blog, you’ve seen what kind of shoes I like to wear. Now really, do shoes like that belong in a Lowe’s?

I say no.

Or at least I say that now after my experience there because it was really fun watching the saleperson try to smother his guffaws of laughter as I asked for “some kind of extender thingy to change really high up lightbulbs.”

Hey – that’s technical language right there, I tell you! I am nothing if not accurate in my communication skills.

Anyway, turns out they do, indeed, have such a thingamajig so I bought it and took it home. Whereupon the boyfriend ever so helpfully pointed out that it wouldn’t fit around the bulbs – not enough space between them and surrounding socket – and therefore wouldn’t be of any use. I got out my telescope, squinted up at the lightbulb stationed oh-so-many miles above my head, and decided that he was probably right, but that I could see a teeny tiny bit of space around the bulb (possibly a hallucination on my part?) and that it was therefore worth trying.

And so I had my dad try it for me the next day.

See, the boyfriend was GOING to help with it, but his method involved some muttered comment about me in a short skirt on a really tall ladder while he volunteered to stay on the ground and keep the ladder steady for me. I didn’t see this process ending with any lightbulbs actually getting changed so that idea got vetoed.

Sadly, however, his initial observation about the device not fitting around the lightbulbs has proven to be true. So, I’m now the proud owner of a useless extender thingamajig, my boyfriend is bummed out about me not getting on the ladder in a skirt, I still don’t have any light on my stairway and am still in danger of being attacked (and possibly eaten?) by scary monsters in the dark.

The kidlet is not happy either and he wants to buy his own flashlight.

Some days, you just can’t win.

But you CAN make jewelry. Here are a couple of pairs of earrings I whipped up on my lunch hour the other day:

More of those pretty, hand-painted ceramic beads paired with Swarovski crystals

Perhaps I can find some kind of glow-in-the-dark, light reflective beads and then make some kind of tiara or headlight construct out of them to wear on the stairs at night? Because, y'know, beads really CAN solve any problem.

KJ

Music: “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne