All’s Well, So Far

Christmas came, and our New Year’s Eve was calm. Kevin and April came, and Peter’s here for New Year’s Day and then goes back home. And then, I guess, life gets back to normal, which is a relative term, these days.

Kevin and April and Peter arrived before Christmas and the adults got to work on all the things that needed repairs/replacements.

Then, we went forward on the fan and light fixture. April got her laptop and we began to go through the kinds of ceiling fans I might like. I just don’t have much experience choosing fixtures. Previously, we’d gotten a ceiling fan for the house we’d lived in for over twenty years. It was in the kitchen of our 10-foot ceiling home, and I’d not had to think about heights. Now, in this 8-foot ceiling house, we had to be more careful. The more we looked at the variety, the more I got lost in the choices. Then, we thought about how the present (non-functional) fan came to be in the house. The room with the fan had been, in all my growing up years, the family den. The television was there, along with a sofa and a couple of easy chairs. It rather needed a fan to move the air around in the room, and the light gave enough illumination for reading and, for my mother, hand sewing.

But, now, that’s where the dining table is. There is a television on a chest, but it’s not really a place where several folks gather on a regular basis.

“So,” asked April, “do you need a fan in here?”

“Well, I guess not,” I said. And we began to look for light fixtures. I found one I liked. And, we were going to get two, because I wanted it to match the fixture which was on the kitchen ceiling, and, of course, that fixture was more than ten years old and wasn’t being manufactured any more. We went off to Home Depot to see it for real. It looked good and we bought two of them, along with bulbs.

The electricians did come, first thing Monday, as promised, and installed both fixtures and carried away the old ones.

David likes that the lights illuminate the corners of the rooms, instead of just beaming straight down. And, after the electricians had gone, Kevin said, “Look at this,” and he was across the room, under the light fixtures, without having to duck, which, apparently, he’d been having to do as he walked under the fan, for many, many years. So, it worked out for everyone.

Then, the dishwasher. When the sudsing didn’t abate, I finally contacted the Bosch folks and described the problem. Of course, it was in the middle of December, and I had to wait for a while for a response. They were ever so sorry to hear about my problem, and, in an e-mail, recommended (and I am not making this up) that I put two Tablespoons of cooking oil in the bottom of the dishwasher and run it, empty, on the hottest cycle. Really?

So, that’s what I did. It did not solve the problem immediately, but there were fewer suds.

So, we’ll see. maybe it’s the sort of thing I’ll need to do every now and then. And, very much cheaper that having repair people come out.

I do understand, and appreciate, how fortunate I am.

Psalm 103:1-5 (Contemporary English Version-by David)