Shock value

Recently, we had a ton of light bulbs all burn out in various parts of the house. The kitchen lost two, the dining room was down one, the living room had three of the six out, the hallway between Jack and Emnmie's room was completely dark, you get the idea.

I asked Josh to replace them because changing the bulbs requires someone to stand on a chair. And when I change them, I usually just drag the nearest kitchen stool around the room and climb up and down off of it. The stools are about four feet tall, have about a three-inch backrest on them and spin. So when I climb up, they tend to wobble and move in circles and pregnant ladies with cerclages probably shouldn't stand in that position.

So he said sure, he'd change them, and three weeks and mucho amount of nagging later, he finally got around to it. Except he replaced them with the eco-friendly bulbs. Those are nice and green and all, but they can't be used in dimmable light situatuons. All our lights on the first floor are dimmable. But Josh, in his quest to save more money the environment, said he was switching them. He did, however, leave the dimmable ones in the living room. I suspect that's only because he likes mood lighting when he plays XBox 360 at night, not because he cares about how I look in flattering light.

He also, in his infinite wisdom, didn't replace one of the bulbs in the dining room. His reasoning? It would save electricity to not have that bulb in there. Perhaps we could unplug one of his five laptops that he runs 24 hours per day. I imagine the cost savings might be a little more than one measly lightbulb in the dining room.

I lived with his decision for a few days, but yesterday I just couldn't take it anymore. Emmie is obsessed with turning the lights on when she gets into her highchair and every time they come on, she points at the dark one and says, "EH?" Which translates to "Why the hell didn't Daddy change that damn bulb?" Plus, every time I sat in the dining room, which is three times each day, it drove me to the brink of insanity. Call it nesting, but my GOD, I couldn't stand the sight of that dark little can light and I was going to do something about.

Last night, while the kids were eating dinner and Josh was out of town on a little business trip, I marched over to the utility closet and pulled out a bulb. It was dimmable. Look at me, just flaunting my lightbulb choices right in his face. My eight-months-pregnant ass climbed up on a dining room chair and replaced the bulb. Just like that! Done.

Jack was all kinds of horrified -- "Mommy! Do NOT stand on chairs. That is not nice!" -- but I assured him it was OK in this instance and only for grown-ups. Emmie thought it was the funniest thing she had ever seen and showed her appreciation for the new rays of light now streaming down upon her by throwing her half-chewed piece of cheese at me. Thanks for that. But because I fought the man and won, I didn't care.

When the kids went in to eat breakfast this morning, I heard the familiar "EH?" from Miss Emmie and Jack yelled, "Mommy! The light bulb is broken again!"

Son of a bitch. Darkness where once there was light. After I plunked down everyone's oatmeal, I climbed up on the chair again to investigate and found the glass of the bulb had broken off at the neck, leaving the inner workings of the bulb in the fixture. Huh. Weird.

I figured I must have gotten a bad bulb and decided to take it out and start again. But how to grab it without the glass surrounding it? Notice, at no time did I think, "Wow, that's live electricity just flowing right through there. Maybe I shouldn't grab it at all."

I reach up, bend the little metal thingies that are sticking out and proceed to shock the shit out of my fingers. I yelp, slam my hand on my leg and suppress the urge to drop the F-bomb. Jack looks up and says, "Mommy, what happened?" Oh nothing, Mommy just sent a kajillion jolts of electricty through her hand and straight into her uterus. I'm sure it's fine.

Because I am nothing if not resourceful, I immediately walked to the computer, where I googled "electrical shock pregnancy" and found many useful entries. Many of which contained the words "fetal distress" and "death." A few deep breaths later, after the realization that people on Yahoo Answers are complete idiots, I figured things were fine. It was a momentary buzz that didn't knock me unconscious and WeeBey was wiggling around just fine. Although that could have been spasms from the possible electrocution it just suffered. Hard to tell, but being my third pregnancy, I just told WeeBey to rub some dirt on it, it would be fine.

I then called Josh to inform him of my stupidity. After asking if I was all right, his next words were, "I told you we should have left it empty." Oh yeah? Well you can just be the next one to get shocked Mr. Energy Savings. You can deal with it tonight. He calmly told me he planned to turn the light switch OFF before touching it. Oh yeah? Well... well... whatever. You just wait until I dim the lights and burn all the bulbs out at once. Then we'll see who's happy.