Posts Tagged ‘I might need a better hobby’

So? We’re not stumbling around in the dark.

Sunday, November 28th, 2010

[Did you have a good Thanksgiving? We did, aside from the last minute trip to the Emergency Room. But c’mon, what’s a holiday without some kind of bodily injury? No holiday at all, I tell you. Husband was cleaning up after a long and lovely day and inadvertently dropped a large cut glass dish that had once belonged to my Grandmother. In addition to shattering into a billion pieces {I lost count at 987,623,554 so I’m assuming it was a billion}, it sliced a nice gash on the inside of his wrist that required 5 stitches to close. I’m not sure how he talked himself out of it, but he was *not* held for psychiatric observation so I’m handling that on my own here. {How you feeling today, honey? All good? A little blue?} On what I’m sure must be a related note, his sister — who lives 70 miles away and was not involved in our family shindig — also had stitches Thanksgiving night, also the result of a cleaning-up injury. I’m not able to psychiatrically evaluate her from 70 miles out, so my brother-in-law will have to step in. Next stop, Christmas.]

I’m gearing up around here to embark on what has become one of my favorite activities, but sadly because of the nature of life it is something that I don’t get to do that often. Hopefully this time around I can break it into two or three events — you know, exteeeeend the happiness. I’m getting set to label my light switches.

Sure. Snicker and laugh. Go ahead. And then read on.

To get an idea of what’s involved, those of you who live in a house that was build sometime in or around the new millennium: go count the light switches on the first floor of your house. Really, go, I’ll wait.

You’re back. And is the answer somewhere in the neighborhood of 57 for the combined 4 (or so) rooms and hallways? I don’t know the history of Electrical and/or Building Codes through the years, but it seems clear to me that someone decreed that there needed to be some kind of relationship between the number of switches and the number of blades of grass in the yard. We have an absurd amount of switches. Just along the kitchen counter top alone, we have three. Three! My family room has four. One room! Four switches? Huh? So some years ago, at the suggestion or example of (I think) a high school friend, I charged up the Brother P-Touch and labeled all the switches in our previous home. It was a job, let me tell you. And then when we moved to this house, slightly bigger and newer, Brother-P and I got to work.

Oh, sure, we were mocked mercilessly by visitors. In particular, my friend The Contractor (we went to high school together too) was amused (and, I’d like to think, impressed) and has actually wondered aloud to me when I’m going to get going on all the new switches he and My Guys have put in over the last six months. Uh oh, is that grudging respect I see?

At any rate, with the unveiling of our new and improved family room, I’ve got to get Brother-P out of his shoebox retirement. There’s a new switch to label in the family room, and as we also put an open staircase from the family room down to the soon-to-be-really finished basement, there’s one at the top of that staircase too.

When those two new switches are labeled, every single switch on the first two floors will be labeled. Every.Single.One. EXCEPT. There’s one in the Master Bedroom’s largest bank that we have never been able to figure out what it controls. (Believe me when I tell you that I have tried.) It remains unlabeled, and it lives across the room from the bed, taunting me daily. It’s my Great White Switch.

Ahem. The downstairs finished basement area is becoming more finished every day, and late last week the electrician put a bunch of plates on the raw switches. They seem, from all appearances, ready for their labels. My fingers are getting itchy. I’ve been practicing peeling that teeny tiny backing off of small labels. I’m ready too.

I’m going to hold off a while longer, however. One of the reasons is that this is, I’m pretty sure, the last time I’ll need to label new switches in bulk. The passing of an era, as it were. Also, and perhaps more importantly, it might not be so good to expose My Guys to the crazy up close and personal. I need them for a while longer — the project creeps on.

Another Word Up, YO! post. This week’s word is “shindig.” A good one. C’mon, get writing and play along:

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