On Having a Husband
| February 9, 2009 | Filled under Blog |
One of the benefits of having CLH home again was realized this weekend: instead of a useless vine-covered alley outside the French doors of our bedroom, I now have a terra cotta-paved patio on which I can sit in the mornings and drink a cup of tea, and where in the evenings after walking the dog CLH can enjoy a smoke from his pipe. My easement will soon be the home of a container garden housing plants grown expressly for their use in cocktails: mint, basil and hopefully a few small citrus trees. And cilantro, the love-it-or-hate-it herb. I am a lover.
When CLH was away my nightly ritual consisted of walking through the house in a certain order, turning off the lights both upstairs and then downstairs before climbing into bed with my vicious beast to protect me. The formula was complicated: 1) turn off all the lights upstairs expect for the one over the landing We do not want to fall down the concrete stairs. 2) Turn on the front patio light, the entry hall light, the bedside table lamp and the bathroom light. 3) Turn off the light on the landing. 4) Turn off the entry hall light. 5) Head to bathroom, brush teeth, wash face. Turn off bathroom light. 6) Get into bed, turn off lamp. 7) Obsess over whether I remembered to lock front door. 8) Turn lamp back on, turn entry hall light back on, check front door, turn entry hall light back off, crawl back into bed, turn lamp off again.
Having two people to do this job, one of whom is willing to brave the world beyond the closed bedroom door when a strange sound is heard outside or upstairs, it makes going to sleep a night a lot easier.
