During that six months or so that I'll have between the time I retire at the end of next school year, and Hick retires at Christmas...there are going to be a few changes around here. Shh...don't tell Hick.
I will be starting with the lighting situation. Perhaps I might have shared with you the lamp I used for years that had no switch. Okay. It had a switch. But it didn't have that rough-edged plastic knob attached with which to turn it on and off. What good is a lamp that won't turn on and off? Let me answer for you. NO DARN GOOD AT ALL! So instead of buying me a new lamp, which could not have cost all that much way back then...Hick gave me a pair of needle-nosed pliers. Kind of like that time he gave me a crutch to carry in the back of my car and prop open the back hatch because the hydraulic thingy was on the fritz.
Surely needle-nosed pliers are not marketed as lamp turner-onners, and crutches are not marketed as car-hatch-proppers. Hick came up with these uses all on his own. Because he's a multi-task tool himself. Obviously, he had a needle-nosed plier and a crutch to spare. But getting back to my dark tale of lighting...
I cannot see a thing in my kitchen. I have a light over the kitchen table, which illuminates the dining area at night, when the three big windows surrounding it are bereft of sunlight. I have two recessed lights over the kitchen sink, which allow me to wash all my dishes by hand and actually get them clean, unlike a certain man around the house who tries his hand at it once a year in an attempt to elicit praise 24/7/365. I have lights under my cabinets that allow me to chop onions to disguise my tears of sadness. But the main light on my kitchen ceiling, the one over the cutting block, the one I need to use for reading labels on boxes and bags before I warm things in the oven or heat them in the microwave, is a piece of not-sugar.
The kitchen ceiling light has prongs for three bulbs. All are filled with bulbs. I estimate the total wattage of those three lights at around twenty. Not three twenty-watt bulbs. Nope. Three 6.66-watt bulbs. Without all my other lights providing support, the kitchen is like a basement in a horror movie. Not even the reflection from Frig II can brighten things up. I have complained and complained to Hick. I know that's quite a shocker. But I have. To no avail. "Val. Those are normal watt bulbs for a kitchen." I need to borrow on of those headband and cap visor lights that I bought him to feed the animals in the winter months. Oops! He doesn't feed the lights TO the animals! He uses them so he can SEE to feed the animals. Which is something I can't do in my kitchen. See to feed my animals.
The bedroom has the opposite problem. Hick has some ceiling fan/chandelier kind of light fixture handing from the ceiling at the foot of the bed, right over my trunk. Not that I'm an elephant or anything. I have a trunk. Not even a good one. A flimsy tan trunk, given to me by my parents before college, containing guns according to Hick's boys when they first met me, without a lock on the clasp, and sides so thin a fast-flying June bug could penetrate the perimeter.
This bedroom light could be used to warn boats away from the craggy shore off the coast of Maine. From its position right here in my Missouri bedroom. A doctor could use this light during surgery, so bright it is that one could see a Junior Mint falling into the wound from above. The brilliance is just slightly less than that of the surface of the sun. To add insult to my eye injury, Hick commandeered a wooden-framed long mirror from my grandma's estate auction, and screwed it (much like a red milk crate on the front of the house) to the wall on my side of the bed, just above the fake electric fireplace.
He must have an advanced Ph.D. in Physics, that Hick. Must have researched and written theses and given dissertations on light refraction and reflection that could make Albert Einstein's hair stand on end. Hick's special area of emphasis was surely angle of incidence and angle of reflection. That mirror shoots shards of light into my eyes when I lay in bed like those given off by a supernova. I could do my own LASIK surgery. A freshman with a laser pointer would be no match for the set-up Hick has made to blind me. A bedroom is supposed to be a comfortable refuge from the elements of the day. Not a stark sparkling white landscape the likes of Flo's Progressive Insurance hideaway.
I suppose I could start sleeping in the kitchen, and Hick could slow-cook his food between his butt and the mattress while he slumbers.
Yep. Val's a problem-solver. I wasn't valedictorian for nothing, you know.
Or you could change the bulbs.
ReplyDeleteIf Hick is anything like most men, he could cook the food at night with the gas that emits from his rear.
ReplyDeleteBut back to the most important part of your post. Hick is a visionary. An inventor. His plier invention and his crutch idea...I think he should go on the show "Shark Tank" with those two ideas. I'm sure he would get an offer of hundreds of dollars to develop and package those two brilliant products.
I guess you could say Hick will screw anything, anywhere. Maybe, just maybe he is trying to blind you with his brilliance. It's a new year. Buy a new lamp and tell him what to do with his needle nose pliers. Happy New year to you and your family and your mama, too.
ReplyDeleteHappy new year to you, Hick, Genius, The Pony & your mom!!
ReplyDeleteYeah. Buy a lamp and some bulbs for that kitchen chandelier. I don't really know what to say about that thing in the bedroom. But if there ARE guns in your trunk, maybe you could use them on it.
ReplyDeletejoeh,
ReplyDeleteAh...such a simple solution. I suppose you think "The Pony!" when you hear hoofbeats, and not "A UNICORN!"
The problem is, Val does not have authorization to change the light bulbs. They are kept under lock and key, or at least on a remote shelf in Hick's basement workshop, where only he and Genius can access them. Also, Hick is the buyer of the light bulbs. I have accused him many a time of only buying 20-watt bulbs for the kitchen. He denies it. I think he declared that he bought 40-watt bulbs.
Those in the bedroom fixture must be special-ordered from the NOAA: the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association. I think they're used for illuminating the ocean floor 7 miles under the surface, near the Mariana Trench, perhaps, and the dark side of the moon.
*****
Sioux,
I would LOVE for Hick to go in a shark tank! No cage. He could defend himself with his cooking implement.
Don't forget his Package Catcher for front porches!
******
Linda,
I guess you could say that. And add "anytime." Hick is trying to blind me, all right. But not with his brilliance. With the brilliance of a thousand glaring suns when he hits that bedroom light at 6:00 a.m. on days when I don't have to work.
Happy New Year! From the whole Thevictorian bunch.
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fishducky,
I will speak for each of them as I say, "Happy New Year to you, too!" Hick's sounds like a grunt, Genius uses a mumble as he snoozes gently on painkillers, The Pony prefaces his with, "Meh," as he doesn't really care about wishing people a happy new year, my mom asks, "She's not one of those women crime writers who commit crimes so they can write about them, is she?" and mine is heartfelt and hearty.
*****
Catalyst,
The kitchen light takes three bulbs. I'll have to dip into my lottery money. No guns in my trunk. Hick has always been a collector, and some might say we sit on an arsenal, but I have no access. Only to the five not-very-good guns in a case under the basement stairs. I don't even know if they're shotguns or .22s or pellet guns. I just know that they're long, and Hick says they are his cheap guns that he wants thieves to steal so they won't look for his good guns.
Thank goodness we've never had intruders. Only those folks (now apprehended) who dumped a headless body in the septic tank up the road. And they brought it in from somewhere else. So I think we're good for now.
I buy my own bulbs. You do need to read the little thing on the fixture that tells you maximum wattage, though. I discovered this the hard way.
ReplyDeleteKathy,
ReplyDeleteI suppose I could buy my own and keep a secret stash. The Pony climbs like a monkey. He can put them in for me. Of course, there's his track record of cutting himself every year when the Christmas lights were checked for duds and strung around the eaves. In fact, that might be why they stay up year round now. Note to self: have a tourniquet handy when The Pony switches out the bulbs.