Friday, Dec. 11, 2009 - 10:07 a.m.

I'm pleased to report real progress on the place-to-put-the-infant front: we have accomplished the moving of the bed!

There was less progress on other, related fronts, such as the installation of the ceiling fan. We bought this ceiling fan for our bedroom as an anniversary present 2? Maybe 3? years ago. It has sat in the garage in its box ever since, faithfully waiting on us to deploy it. The problem was, we couldn't get the ladder into the right position in the bedroom without moving the bed, and until now, we never quite had the motivation to do all the work necessary to move the bed. Now was our chance! We thought. So J gets up there, takes down the lighting fixture, discovers a) a wire with a bare spot (we don't have any electrical tape on hand, so fixing this would require a trip out somewhere) and worse yet, b) that we have to determine whether the fixture is already mounted on a joist or not, so that the fan would not fall on us and crush us in our sleep. We are not carpenters. How the hell do you know? We tried to look in the attic, but after multiple attempts at finding a stepladder tall enough for J to be able to see into the attic, discovered that the little attic space is boxed in and doesn't afford a view of the ceilings in the adjacent bedrooms. There followed a period of searching the internet for the answer, during which I mostly napped. Upon waking, J informed me that the joist is perhaps beside the point; the electrical box itself is not up to the task. We would need an electrician.

*sigh*

Back into the box went the fan, and now we have no overhead light in the bedroom, either.

But! The bed is moved, and vacuumed under, and the bedside crib experimentally deployed with success. I don't really understand how I'm supposed to leave the bed once everyone is in it, though. The crib will be set in the place of my usual exit point, and the pile of cats will block the more westerly route. J of course usually thoroughly blocks the last-resort southern exit. There can sometimes be such a thing as too much love, especially early in the morning when one has to pee.

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