Monday, June 8, 2009

Raisin Bran Makes You Smart

Last July I bought a cieling fan for my bedroom. It was my birthday gift to myself. The room gets a bit warm at night and the air conditioner wakes me up as it clicks on and off. Naturally I thought of a ceiling fan to save me. My gift to me was opened the day I bought it, and closed back up a few minutes later. Too complicated for me. It sat in my front room for a month and then one day was taken to the loft, where I worried, it would never return.




(Unfortunately I jumped the gun before I bought the fan and took my light down, thinking that would motivate me to buy the fan and assemble it. But it's amazing what you can get used to living without. This picture shows how my cieling looked for a very long time. Side note: I have been without a microwave for 6 months...hard at first...now I don't even notice)





But a miracle happened two weeks ago (I'm posting this WAY after I wrote it...it took awhile to remember to get pics), I decided I WOULD get it done and hung. Maybe I wanted a challenge. Maybe I wanted to do something that my family told me couldn't be done without an electrician. Maybe I was ticked off and didn't want to be around people. But mostly, I just wanted to be cool at night. And I'm cheap. Why pay an electrician?! I enjoyed getting electrocuted (notice the black and white wires in the above picture, somehow they moved and were touching PERFECTLY when I turned on the power). I enjoyed destroying my circuit braker. I enjoyed paying $50 for an archaic "fuse box" (??) that if weren't a collector's item would've only cost 6 bucks. I enjoyed begging a friend who knew what he was doing to finish the project. I REALLY enjoyed that he had to disconnect the wiring he had just connected because I had done something wrong which needed correcting. I loved that I didn't have a battery for my remote so we couldn't even tell if it worked. And the best, I love that 4 days later I finally got the battery and ......it didn't work. I love dejection/rejection/a slapped face/humility/shame. It felt good. But what felt better was me eating a bowl of Total Raisin Bran and realizing "maybe my light switch on the wall wasn't on , that would keep the remote from working" and being right. IT WORKS!!!!!!!! And I can control it from the comforts of my bed and the light exercise of my digits.


(It will be another year before I get to painting that circle on the cieling. I'll send a picture when that day happens....cold day in hell or I decide to move)