Dear Diary

Yesterday, I changed a light bulb.

Now, I'm sure you are wondering how many Iggys (Iggies?) does it take to change a light bulb.

The answer is the same as the answer to "How many jugglers does it take to change a light bulb?"

And that is, only one, but it takes at least three light bulbs...

You see, the light bulb burned out in my hallway sometime shortly before last Thanksgiving. The very next day, I went downstairs to the supply closet and got out a couple of boxes of light bulbs and sat them on my dining room table and ... then I got distracted.

So November turned into December, and 2009 into 2010... and winter came and left and then spring came... and now, summer is just about around the corner...

I know sometime in February I would have appreciated a hall light, as I got up in the wee hours of the morning to "relieve myself" and walked into a closed door giving myself a hellacious bruise.

I also vaguely recall being somewhat glad when Daylight Savings time arrived, and then the hall wasn't quite so dark at night. And full moons! Oh, they were a godsend!

So anyway, yesterday, I looked at the dining room table and I saw two boxes of light bulbs sitting just were I left them. I made a scrunched up face and wondered why I felt I needed to bring up two boxes from the downstairs closet.

I wandered over to the boxes, and saw they were of two different wattage's. Hmmm... I guess I was planning ahead so I had whichever size I needed. I sat down on my sofa and was about to flick on the TV when the light bulb went on over my head, figuratively, and not the one in the hallway.

"Oh yeah! I was going to change that light bulb in the hallway!"

I got out a chair. I know, I know, I should have gotten at least a step-stool but I wasn't that ambitious. I placed the chair under the domed ceiling light bulb fixture, got up on the chair and took down the dome.

Wow! I wonder how and where all those dead dried out bugs came from anyway? I swiped away the cobwebs from the fixture and washed the glass dome in my kitchen sink and... hmmm.. I didn't have a towel to dry it with. So I went downstairs and got a clean dish towel and came back up and dried out the fixture and got back up the chair and put the glass dome back up on the ceiling fixture.

Proud of myself, I put the chair back where I got it.

I was comfortably reseated on the sofa when it occurred to me, durn it! I hadn't changed the bulb.

Hmmm... Getting back up, I retrieved the chair, re-took down the glass dome, unscrewed the light bulb, got down from the chair, threw away the old light bulb and just then, the doorbell rang. I had a wonderful chat with someone trying to sell me stuff that would make my lawn weed-free. I talked to him for at least twenty minutes before I told him I think weeds have a right to life as much as any of God's lifeforms and killing them was murder. I was slightly puzzled by the odd look he gave me when he walked back to his gaudy but cool, green colored van.

I closed the front door and reseated myself on my sofa. My eyes began to droop and dreamland was calling me (quite loudly, actually), when suddenly I went "No!! Not time to sleep! Must change the light bulb!"

I got up on the chair with a new light bulb and promptly dropped it. It miraculously survived the fall to the floor and didn't break, but then I stepped on it getting down from the chair and crushed it into a bazillion pieces. Cussing softly, I went and got another light bulb. I screwed this one in, put the glass dome back up, and then flicked the switch... and ... nada. nothing...

At least this time, I didn't have to retrieve the chair.

So up I went onto the chair, off and down came the dome, unscrewed was the defective bulb, went and got another bulb, screwed it in and this time... this time... I hit the switch before putting the dome back on and ... Voila! The light shines for the first time in ... let's see... December, January, February, March, April, May, June... about 7 months. Glory be!


Maybe tomorrow, I'll put the glass dome back up and put the chair away.