Day: November 29, 2006

Today Patches was sick. This meant I got to snuggle him to sleep in my lap twice today. He snuggles so small when he’s in my lap. When he’s awake I keep marvelling at how big he is getting, but when he’s asleep he still seems so small.

Kiki’s school class has been mummifying chickens. That’s right, they buy a chicken from a store, bury it in salt for two weeks, the wrap it up in approved mummy manner. These mummified chickens are then stored for a year so next year’s class can have the joy of opening a mummified chicken. Kiki got to open one from last year. She says it smelled really gross. And yes the kids always wear gloves for this, I checked. Today Kiki was telling me that they’re doing an extra special chicken that will get stored for 5 years. Along with the mummified chicken this year’s class is including notes and “curses” for students 5 years ahead. It’s kind of like a time capsule, only new and improved with a dead chicken. In case you hadn’t guessed, they’re studying ancient Egypt. I don’t know if mummified chickens are proven to improve absorption of knowledge of all things Egyptian, but I do know that it has Kiki fascinated. She has babbled about mummifying chickens many times over the past few weeks. I never got to mummify a chicken when I was in school. Now I feel left out.

In unrelated news, we now have light. A while ago I wrote about household quirks and I mentioned the light in the girl’s bedroom which won’t turn on at all. With the shorter days of winter the lack of light became increasingly annoying. This particular light has been a problem for years. It flickered a lot and burned out bulbs frequently. We figured it was a bad fixture and replaced it. The new florescent light was wonderful until the day it refused to turn on. We put up with it that way for months until I finally purchased new florescent bulbs. I put in the new bulbs, it still refused to turn on. It sat that way for nearly a year until last week when we replaced the switch. Still no light.

Captain Electric came to our rescue. They sent a nice man who found a shorted wire and informed us that the florescent light fixture was permanently broken. The only alternate available was the basic utility room bare bulb fixture. So now that is what the girls have in their room. BUT they have a switch that makes their room light! We can replace the ugly fixture later now that the bad wire is fixed. He also replaced the motor on one of our bathroom fans, changed a lightbulb on a 12′ ceiling, and put a cover plate on the box that used to hold controls for a swamp cooler. As an added bonus Captain Electric has a policy that if their technician is late, the customer gets free movie tickets and a dinner coupon. It’s a psychological trick that works very well, I was almost glad when they called me and told me he would be late. So lights, a fan, dinner, and a movie. If only it didn’t come with that $400 bill.