And by quoting Procol Haram’s “Whiter Shade of Pale” here, what I’m trying to say is that I spent all day – ALL DAY – installing a ceiling light/fan-dang-o combo in Sonny’s room.  Did I mention that the instructions indicated it was supposed to take 120 minutes to install, but instead took ALL DAY?!?  Seems like I may have mentioned that “ALL DAY” part already.  But it bears repeating because it took ALL DAY TO INSTALL THE CEILING LIGHT/FAN-DANG-O!

Thanks for getting all up in my kool-aid, and wondering what took me so long.  In which case, I’ll have you know that it may have been the not one, but TWO subsequent trips to the hardware store for crap we didn’t know we needed until we got back from the hardware store the first time with the fan.

Or perhaps it was the panicked call to Neighbor Man to ask about the color coded wires we DIDNT HAVE coming out of the ceiling.  The fan instruction booklet said to connect the black wire from the light/fan-dang-o to the black wire from the ceiling, ditto blue wire, ditto white wire, ditto green wire.  But surprise!  Once we got past the black wire, we only had a red wire, a yellow wire and a bare wire-colored wire coming from the ceiling.  And when the think tank assigned to the pressing wire color-coding problem is an 11 year old boy and his friend, another 11 year old boy (who are both only in it because they were promised milkshakes at the end of the install), it’s wise to call in a former electrician who lives next door and who brings over his own Geiger counter when weighing in on wire colors.  (Or it may have been a voltmeter, but Geiger counter makes it sound like we were handling high levels of radioactive moronicy, so we’ll go with Geiger counter.  clickclickclickclickclick)

So the whole day passes like this, clickclickclickclickclick, barely holding on until it’s milkshake time.  Until finally, finally, the sun is setting and my 11 year old dream team and I (Neighbor Man and his Geiger counter left an entire lifetime ago, I wonder why) are standing beside the wall switch wearing sunglasses.  Don’t ask.  It was falling drywall and lack of safety glasses that led to the brilliant sunglasses idea.  Hey, go safe or go home!  Also?  Our future is so bright, we gotta wear shades.  And yes, I win this round of “An 80’s Song for Every Moment in Life” game we enjoy playing by quoting that 1986 song by Timbuk3.  Because turns out, there IS an 80’s song for ceiling fan-dang-o installations.

Anywho, back to Sonny and his bright future standing beside the wall switch.  He throws it, the light goes on immediately and the fan starts to turn.   And slowly picks up speed. And…

speaking of Geiger counters

Click click click.  Clink clink clink.  Ca-clink clink clank clank CLANK!  CLANK WHUMP!  CLANK WHUMP!!!

Oy.  I turn off the switch, usher everyone out and close the door.  No amount of sunglasses will protect us from what’s going on in there…so we may as well go for milkshakes.  A promise is a promise afterall, even if the fan-dang-o install is a little more “death trap” than originally anticipated.  And just to clarify, when I said, “We skipped the light fandango,” right there at the beginning, in the title of this blog, what I REALLY meant was: I wish we skipped the whole light damn-fan-go thing.