Light of the World... or in our apartment

Here's the greatest story of the week:


We have all been doing our best to set up our new place so that it's relatively homey. The first steps were things like shower heads (ok, we still haven't gotten those installed) and garbage cans. Dishes. Keys. LIGHTBULBS.

In this country, there are two kinds of lightbulbs for sale: plug in and screw in. Safi.

The problem was that our light fixtures are very tall and a bit broken, so we couldn't see which kinds to buy. No problem, asked the guardian of the building, and he pointed at the screw-ins. It wasn't the screw-ins. We were visiting the hanout at 10pm when we discovered we had no lights in our house.

We returned triumphantly to put them up in the dark, so I broke out the headlamp. I got laughed at, of course, wearing my headlamp around the house, but I could see! I love those things.

Well, then we had the problem of getting the bulbs into the sockets, being three reasonably petite women. Here's how it played out. Check the variety and creativity here!

In the entrance hall, the walls were too far apart to climb, but nothing would fit to stand on. We have an extra frosh stand (it's basically a base of planks with four short legs (6"?) and a few cross-beams of about 2x4 size. We propped the frosh stand against the wall, and climbed the cross-beams like a ladder while Candace and Suzanne held it up against the wall for dear life. Balanced precariously on an up-ended piece of furniture, I could just reach the socket.

In the living room, no walls were near the socket, so a new procedure was needed. There's a wobbly table, and we put an end table (these are the only two pieces of furniture in the house besides the froshes and beds) on top of the wobbly table. Standing on both tables on my tip-toes, the light went in.

The kitchen was easy. The counter got me to the right height, then it was just a matter of straddling the big room with one foot on the counter, and one on the fridge to plug in the bulb.

The hallway was a repeat of the frosh stand, except it didn't quite fit so we rebounded off of it to wedge myself between the walls. Then I could stay long enough to get the bulb in place.

In my bedroom, there was nothing to stand on (my bed is about a foot off the ground), no nearby walls, and no room to carry in the table. Eventually, Candace went up on my shoulders to plug in the light. Suzanne stood in front and braced our leaning tower, and we were SO CLOSE. Standing next to the bed, we scuffled the mattress off to one side and stepped up onto the frosh-stand. Quite a picture.

In Suzanne's bedroom, we stacked the taller girls instead, with Candace up on Suzanne's shoulders, but it still required us to drag the extra frosh stand into the room, since Suzanne's bed had fallen apart earlier that day.

Shwia b'shwia.