Let there be light.

 Holy Mother of Pearl.  I'm back. 

Sorry, dude.  My sis, Beads, was here for a week, and we spent like 20 out of every 24 hours playing.  That girl likes to parrrrrrrrrrrrtayyyyyyyyyyyyy.  She is a whirlwind of energy.  It makes me jealous.  She tired us all out.  We are all now recovering.  Not that I'm complaining.  Because I like to parrrrrrrrrtayyyyyyy, too.

 A smattering of pictures from the ten thousand things that we did.

It was big, big fun.

And now let's talk about lights, shall we?  Specifically, the light in my dining room:

This light has two chains.  One for the fan, one for the light.  Ben and I learned a long time ago that bad things happen if you tug on the light chain.  The fan chain is all good.  But if you tug on the light chain, the light will go out and never, ever, ever work again.  Until Ben takes the whole dang thing apart, does something magical to it, and puts it back together.

So one month ago - I'll repeat this for emphasis - one month ago, my mom was baby-sitting my kiddos.  I came home, thanked her, and went about my business.  About an hour or so later, it was getting dark outside, so I clicked on the light switch that controls this light.  And the light wouldn't go on.  Oh no, I thought.  Mom jerked the chain.  I forgot to tell her never to jerk the chain.

So I told Ben on skype that night.  He tried to explain the magical thing he does when he takes the whole dang light fixture apart in situations like this.  I pretended like I understood (I did not understand) and got out his tools the next day to attempt some magic of my own.

Dismal failure.  I was able to take apart the bottom stuff, look at it, shrug, and put the bottom stuff back together.  None of which magically fixed my light chain issue.

So we had a dark dining room. I have a floor lamp in there that gives off a teeny amount of light - like, as much light as maybe one candle would give off?  Not much.  It's been obnoxious, obviously.


When Gage had his birthday party, we all sat around the table eating birthday cake in the dark.  Not kidding.  When Beads, Mom, and Dad came over to play Ticket to Ride (my current all-time favorite board game), we brought in a lamp from another room and played, squinting at the game board and occasionally asking one another what color a certain card was. 

Dad offered to come over today and fiddle with the light and see what he could do.  I gratefully accepted.  After messing with it for quite awhile, he came over to me, holding the light bulbs that have been screwed into the fixture.

"Um, Kar, do you think that maybe both of your light bulbs are just burned out??"

I stood staring at him, mouth agape.

Um, I did not even think of that possibility.  That something as simple as a light bulb burning out had caused me one MONTH of darkness in a major room in my house.

He showed me the darkened, broken-off filaments in each bulb.  Oh my goshhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  I almost wished that he was wrong.  I mean, getting new light bulbs is the best and easiest fix, right?  But if that's all it took, and we've been sitting in the dark for an entire MONTH because I didn't think to check that possibility out..... oh my goshhhhhhhhhh.

He took off to Home Depot to get some more bulbs, came home, screwed them in, and voila, we have light in our dining room once more.  It was just two burned out bulbs.  Nothing more.

Sighhhh.  Sometimes I wonder what has happened to my brain.  It's long gone.