10 April 2014

Because of...reasons, my dad gave me a healthy appreciation of avoiding fire. That tends to happen when your house burns down when you're a kid; we never had a fire in the fireplace--when we had one--or had Christmas lights outside when I was a kid. He relented on that latter thing later in life, but for all of my childhood he was a manical kind of careful where the potential for fire was concerned.

My mother was fully on board with that; there were times she would have liked a toasty fire crackling away in the fireplace and she wanted outside holiday decorations, but she couldn't imagine the horror of that particular scar on his childhood and wasn't about to push those limits. She knew his biggest concern wasn't necessarily of losing another home to a fire, but of losing his family. My dad was a quiet man, emotionally reserved, but he was a family man to the core. He lived for his wife and his kids, and then his grandkids, and was not risking anything.

So fire was limited to the BBQ grill, and he was pretty obsessive about making sure it was put out after he was done grilling.

I am not as obsessive, but he did drill some of that caution pretty deeply into my psyche. So, when I noticed the other night that one of the lights in my ceiling light continued to glow after I turned it off, I snapped to attention. When it kept glowing, I was more than concerned. When it continued for 20 minutes, I was online looking for answers.

It was the middle of the night but there was no way I was sleeping until I knew for sure there was nothing about that fixture that would lead to a fire.

Yes, CFLs can glow for a bit, but not 20 minutes.

That thing was not being turned on again. Blame my dad, but no. Not turning it on.

This meant replacing the entire thing--the fan part hasn't worked in a long time--and replacing it meant taking the bed apart and hauling it out into the front room.

Max was annoyed. His nap time was seriously disrupted.

Buddah, on the other hand...he was thrilled.

 He helped us drag the box springs out of the room by jumping on top and riding until we made him get down, but his disappointment over that was soon soothed by the discovery of the mattress standing in the front room.

He ran for it and climbed it like  tree.

He jumped down, and did it again...but this time decided he was staying put.

An hour later, he was still there, watching everything going on around him.

An hour after that, he was asleep, stretched out on that narrow strip of mattress.

After the Spouse Thingy got the new ceiling fan installed (with minimal help from me...I mainly just handed him a few screws and then played on Facebook) we ran out to get some lunch and to go to the grocery store; when we came back an hour later he was finally down, but the mattress was still warm.

I almost felt bad for him when we dragged everything back into the bedroom.

So now...I won't worry about turning the light on, and the fan on that thing is super quiet. I've been sleeping with a fan for over 30 years, but they've always been loud desk fans or floor fans on tall poles. They've provided enough white noise that I sometimes wonder if they've damaged my hearing, but I can't sleep without one.

Last night the quiet of this fan let me hear all the nighttime house noise, and as noisy as I've always thought Max is...he's worse. That little chit talks *a lot* during the night. I heard him on the other side of the house, probably bitching at Buddah. I heard him in the next room, announcing his decision to sleep on his tower in there for a while. I heard his feet pad up and down the hall.

No wonder he sleeps most of the day away. He wanders the house all night.

Well...he wanders when he's not curled up next to my head.

That horribly furry spot Buddah's on top of?

That's where Max waits in the morning for me to wake up. That's where Max waits for breakfast. It's where he waits for me to roll over and give him sleepy head skritches.

No, that's not a month's worth of fur. It's about a week's worth.

Yeah, you don't want to stay here if you have cat allergies.

The house won't burn down on you now, thanks to the Spouse Thingy's willingness to take seriously my want of a new ceiling fan because...fire...but you will probably swell up like a Macy's Parade Balloon, and while I keep lots of Benedryl on hand, it probably wouldn't be enough.