Both Dave and I have been crazy busy these last several months. I've been busy with work and Dave's been busy studying for his boards. It's been a great help to have the grandparents help out with taking care of Ben, but daily maintenance of our home has been lacking. Laundry is undone, there are crumbs and crackers on the floor, the fish tank hasn't been cleaned in recent memory.

One of the things that has been undone for a while is the light above our kitchen sink. It's been out for several weeks now. Although we have a regular kitchen light, it's still kind of dim around the sink, so I'm washing dishes in the dark.

I was hoping that Dave would change it, because it's a weird light fixture and he did it before. But he's been so busy that he hasn't had a chance. So I decided to do it myself.

It's hard to get to the light fixture, because it's above the sink. I put a chair right next to the sink and had to put my foot on the sink to balance myself to reach the light. The light is actually in the ceiling with a frosted glass cover over it. I tried to twist the glass cover off, but it wouldn't budge. After several minutes trying, I finally sucked it up and asked Dave how he did it. He told me that I needed to get a screwdriver to wedge the cover off the light. I grabbed a screwdriver and was able to wedge the cover loose. After some pressure and twisting, I was getting the cover off, little by little. Pieces of dust, dirt and ceiling fell on me and into the sink below. The light had this little contraption that made sure that the cover didn't fall off, so it was difficult to take off. But with some prodding I was getting it loose, as more bits and pieces of dirt fell down.

Then I realized it wasn't dirt. I looked down, into the sink to confirm my thoughts.

I screamed in horror when I realized what it was.

Carcasses.

Bug carcasses.

I guess that the bugs had gotten curious about the light, crawled up into the light fixture and died. There was a little mass grave up there, as could be seen by all the bodies in my sink.

Dave came down to ask me what was happening, and I cried, "Bugs! There's bugs up here!"

"Are they alive?"

"No, it's just bodies, dead bodies, but I thought it was dirt. They were falling ON ME and I didn't even know!"

He shook his head and walked back upstairs.

I knew I was close to changing the bulb, just an inch or two before I could stick my hand in to remove the bulb. I resisted the need to put on a full body hazmat suit. However, I couldn't stop myself from looking down at the various bug bodies in the sink. I reached in and unscrewed the bulb, took it out, and then tried putting in the new bulb. Because of the angle that my hand was in there (I hadn't completely removed the cover) it was hard for me to screw in the new bulb. My head was filled with visions of the relatives of those dead bugs swarming up onto my hands to get revenge for disturbing the little bug graveyard. Finally, I got the lightbulb screwed in.

I sighed and felt proud of my achivement.

But next time, I'm going to make Dave change it. Either that, or get my dad to do it!

Posted by Yano at May 29, 2007 06:59 AM

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