Broken

When Dan and I first transferred to Chicago five years ago (has it been THAT long?) we had been married a little over a year. Our Naperville apartment had virtually all new furniture, dishes and linens. Everything was new and fresh.

Now we are reaching that "everything is breaking" part of life- the "maintenance" period.

A few weeks ago, I tried to mow a small section of our lawn but the lawnmower had a missing piece which made it not work.

Last week my friend Ann came over to use my sewing machine. It's not a glamorous machine, but it's a Bernina and it's supposedly built like a work horse. Well, it wouldn't work either.

But the freakiest, and strangely enough least expensive, of maintenance issues has been our basement flood lights. We have 19 can lights in our basement which we installed at the same time, roughly two years ago. The past two days one light has burnt out each day. The reason it's freaky to me is that the light burns out suddenly, almost flash-like. Sometimes I jolt when I hear the *poof* sound of the light's weary filament. I tend to scare easily, but it doesn't help to know that 17 other lights are bound to go any day. They're like 17 mini ticking time bombs. What's more, now that we've sold our house, I'm not particularly motivated to replace them with flood lights. Nope-ordinary bulbs will have to do. Can't let the new buyers think their house is perfect. *ahem* Even though it is.