OUR HOME KNOWS WE'RE LEAVING

They say that inanimate objects don't have a soul. I beg to differ. Our home knows we are leaving.

Case in point. We have had no problems for awhile with our 118 year old home in terms of breakdowns or needed repairs. Great, the place is ready for the "house watcher" (Javier) and the renters starting September 1. Oops, I believe she heard we were "abandoning" her for a year. In the past seven days, the lawnmower broke (fixed with a stair tread and self locking nuts from Camp Washington Hardware...thanks Kevin) and another usual incident occurred.

If there are any illusions of control, such as that we will be able to control the trains in India or the ability to see the Southern Lights in Hobart, this will prove me WRONG!

The person helping us clean the house yelled HELP!!! when I was upstairs on the computer. I came down to find her standing on top of the dining room table. She was dusting the light and in the process it fell from the ceiling and hit her on the head. I held the light as she crawled down and rubbed her head. No blood, no foul. I was able to rig up a ladder with an inverted basement chair to hold the light high enough to take the pressure off the electric cord. The light still worked. YAY!!!

NOT TO WORRY. A handyman was coming over at 4:00 to fix two windows with broken cords. He has done electric work for years so after we got the cords replaced, he tackled the reestablishment of the art lamp pendant on the ceiling. After some scraping of wires we were ready. I turned on the light only to see sparks come out of the switch. Oops, I guess that was the wrong wire. OK, no deaths, so we are alright.

NOT TO WORRY. We had arranged for an electrician to be over the next morning to fix some other issues. While "we" (Dan, the qualified and me, the unqualified) worked on the light, everything was great. He needed more slack so I replaced the inverted chair with a flexible vinyl bucket. The top of the bucket was now about eight foot off the ground. Dan went to the basement and I held the bucket which held the light. I started to fall backwards, grabbed for the light, and watched it as the one day project finally died. The light broke into at least twenty pieces.

NOT TO WORRY. lisa (yes, she spells it with a lower case L) and I went to Lowes, bought three pendant lamps and had Dan install them the next day.

Moral: 1) You can't control when poopies happen, 2) This is not the way to redecorate, 3) Never clean your dining room light and 4) I NEVER DID LIKE THE ORIGINAL LIGHT!!!