Light bulbs and horses.

For whatever reason, our house has 10,000 lightbulbs. Eliana (who was here on Saturday) is beautiful in her Christmas themed sweater, but notice just 7,500 lights in the ceiling behind her. When we moved in, they were all incandescent light bulbs and in a flurry of environmental consciousness soon after we moved in, Jeremy switched them all to compact fluorescent light bulbs. This was very expensive and slightly heartbreaking for me because we were throwing away perfectly good things doing their slightly less than perfect job. Anyways, we always didn’t like the compact fluorescents as they are annoying and they go into environmental waste when they burn out, so we are switching (in theory) over to LED as they burn out. But I’ve been so busy the last 5 years, they have randomly burned out and I haven’t notice and I didn’t do anything about it, because instead of 7,500 lights, there were now 7,494 light bulbs and then who cares because, really who cares? But I care now. But here is the problem, I found 6 brand new incandescent light bulbs deep in a closet while decluttering and I didn’t want to throw away perfectly good new light bulbs that I could use right now, so I got up on a step ladder while Jeremy was not paying attention (this is hard to do because he never leaves the house and is often found within earshot of the burned out light bulbs) and then installed the 6 heat spewing Edison era light bulbs. And then I did notice that the there were pockets of darkness that are now no longer dark. I left them there for about three days without telling Jeremy. But I finally had to break down and tell him that I went backwards three decades in light bulb technology and he yelled at me and said – what are you doing?!? you have to take them out!!!? They use so much extra energy and then I said – but they were brand new! What should I have done with them? Throw them away? And then he said – yes! THROW THEM AWAY! And then this resulted in – literally a 45 minute discussion of which new light bulbs to buy – Amazon? Home Depot? Phillips? Off brand? 48 or 12? what about the ceiling fans? Globe lights? Ack. I think now we have a light bulb plan for the entire house. The incandescents are still up there awaiting their death.

Jeremy had a nice bike ride on Saturday.

I spent the weekend volunteering at a horse rescue? Why a horse rescue? I’ve never really been interested in horses at all, but I wanted a “job” where I meet people, is outside and there is some physical labor involved. This used to be nursing (ahhh, it technically wasn’t outside outside, but it was outside the house…, but I really can’t take the 12 hour shifts which often involved yelling (not by me, rather at me) I tried the state parks, but they wanted me to clean up trash by myself around the campground which seemed lonely and gloomy and I would be mad the whole time about the people who hadn’t picked up after themselves in the first place. Then I found this horse place which is a well-run incredibly well-oiled volunteer organization. There is poop shoveling, horse grooming, tractor fixing and an online system to sign up for shifts and people will tell you exactly what to do and it’s endless work. So I did the two day orientation and I’m ready to muck a stall. Anytime! Even on Christmas Day if I wanted to, because horse pooping does not take a holiday. It’s a little far from the house, I’m the only person of color, but the horses are handsome and it fits all my volunteer criteria. This is Waldo. I’m excited. I also am excited I get to buy a pair of horse-y boots.