There’s a Thing for That?

Although cleverly camoflaged by venetian blinds, the dining room window that overlooks our front porch is a not-so-secret mess. The narrow space between the inside window and the outside screen is haphazardly jammed and stuffed with worn out dishcloths and discarded hand towels.

One might ask, ” Why?” – which would be a perfectly reasonable question. The answer has to do with the age of this house and the dismaying lack of electrical outlets in our nearly-one-hundred-year-old dwelling. We’re talking two, maybe three, outlets per room if you’re lucky, and none outside at all – don’t even go there.

As a result, our dining room window needs to remain slightly cracked open all year – regardless of the weather – so that our porch string lights can be on nightly, for ambiance. The lights are inconveninetly plugged into one of two sockets in the dining room, the one slightly near the window. An industrial grade extension cord snakes its way from the lights outside, down the drain-spout in the northwest corner of the porch, up the brick facade to the window ledge and in through the dining room window to the outlet, while the “discreet” wadding – brimming in the sill area – does its best to keep out the breeze.

It’s been that way for years with the lights, the orange extension cord, and the window. We basically had a choice between outdoor luminaries or a slightly chilly dining room, and we chose lights. Well, I chose lights, and the rest of the family just went along with it.

Recently however, we had electricians do some work on the house, and one of the priority jobs included putting an OUTDOOR socket on the porch for the lights. YAY! No more extension cord! No more dish towels! No more draft!

Wonderful, right?

Well, not so much. Like I said, the porch is brick, so as luck would have it, the new socket had to be located – not on the porch – but around on the north side of the house – the dark side of the house that is surrounded by dense cedar shrubs and visited by critters that like to explore our nearby compost bin. So now, instead of unplugging the lights in the well lit and warm (although drafty) dining room, we have to go outside to the unlit, wild kingdom side of the house to unplug the blooming lights in the dark every night. And it’s still cold out there this time of year!

I was beginning to not like the lights.

That is, until another electrician offered, “You don’t have to go out there at night. There’s a thing for that.”