More Heat Than Light

When you flick a light switch you have an expectation that the fixture overhead will illuminate the surroundings. Last night, when I did just that in my kitchen and nothing happened, I assumed the fuse had blown. Wrong! As the spouse had been poking around in the attic in about the same place as the light he assumed he'd dislodged a wire and was confident he'd get it working in the morning. Wrong! For reasons passing understanding our light had decided to cash in its chips. No problem, it was old and we always planned to change it for something nicer anyway. And so we popped into the local DIY superstore and, wouldn't you just know it, saw the perfect thing. Excellent! In fact it was so nice I thought we should change out the lights in our family room (we have four fixtures in there, yes it's huge) and have them all match. But they didn't have any stock on hand. In fact, these were a non-stock item. In other words, they were not going to carry them any longer. But... another store ,a mere forty miles away, had four. Okay, but I wanted five. Ah! But have you seen the smaller version? When I looked at it, I thought it would do very nicely for the kitchen. So we piled back in the SUV and high-tailed it to the other store. We grabbed the boxes with the strongest assurance from the associate that no, the boxes hadn't been opened .These were all never-left-the-store brand new. Then the spouse pointed out a ceiling fan, which happened to be a very close match to the finish of the light fittings. Okay, we can take that to replace the one in the breakfast nook. And on the way to the checkout there was this pendant thingy on sale ( the last one) which would look really good over the sink, especially as the light that is currently up there has seen many better days. Snagged that, and three alabaster-type glass shades to go with it. Oh yes and the various bulbs and tubes necessary, plus a really cool remote switch for the fan. Gulped a the price when we made it to the cash register but, hey ,we're all set to have the spiffiest kitchen on the block.

So we get home and have a bite of lunch and then the fun really begins. Spouse sends me off to write a book or whatever it is that I do when I'm not hanging on his every word, and starts dismantling the overhead light. I'm happy to let him do this without my assistance. Five minutes later he's calling me to look at a problem. When he took the old fluorescent fixture down, he revealed the reason why it was slightly off-center in the room. Someone had tried to put their foot through the ceiling. Not good. There was a crack like the Grand Canyon up there. Okay, well it's better to know these things. Put it on the list of "things to do" and put the new lamp up in its place. We'll fix that later this year when we plan to take the nasty popcorn stuff off the ceiling anyway. Not so fast. The new matching, but smaller fixture won't cover the crack. Darn it. Well no big deal. We don't mind waiting to do up the family room, and there's always the one that's on display at our local store. We'll go and ask if we can buy that as they aren't carrying this line any longer. A perfect solution. So then the spouse opens one of the boxes and... the damned fixture is broken! Not just a little bit. It's smashed. And so was the next one he opened.

It takes a lot to get me riled, it really does. But when I've spent the whole day running around, wasting time and gas and getting absolutely nowhere, having my hopes raised and then dashed, I tend to get a teeny bit grouchy.

So we've taken the whole shebang back to the local store and I still don't have a light in my kitchen and I haven't done the edits that I promised myself I would and I'm spitting feathers about the lot of it!

Thanks for listening, I feel better now.