Damn you Ikea.

Last week I visited Ikea to get a light for our living room.  Due to space constraints in that corner, it needed to be something that could hang from a hook on the ceiling.  Unfortunately, when I got home I realized that there was no on/off switch for the light (seriously Ikea?  I think you are taking simplicity too far).  Because the wall outlet is blocked by the couch, this means that to turn off the light, you turn the bulb a quarter-turn counter-clockwise.  Which was exactly what I did last night before bed.  Fast-forward forty minutes, when the light TURNED BACK ON.  By  ITSELF.  I awoke- confused and terrified.  To any normal person, the natural conclusion is: 'Man, I didn't turn the bulb far enough- it's gonna do this all night.  I should go fix it'.  To someone who watches too much Supernatural and has no common sense, it clearly means that there is a ghost in the house and we were all going to die.  Fixing the bulb is what the ghost wants you to do.  That's when the first victim (usually a pretty woman- confound my natural good looks!) dies.  Probably by Ikea cord strangulation.

I lay there for half an hour, heavy with the responsibility of being the one awake and aware of danger.  Why is it always me? Several times I almost woke Adrian to talk to him about it, but he was getting up at 5:30 to catch a flight to Vancouver and we know how territorial he is about his sleep.  If I woke him and he couldn't get back to sleep, he'd be all 'remember that time you woke me up to turn off the light?' for like, ever.  And then, the light TURNED OFF.  This was even worse, because now I was IN THE DARK and pretty sure I was having a heart attack.

Unfortunately, the light bulb wasn't the only problem.  The front screen door wasn't latched, and the occasional creak and scritch was terrifying.  Additionally, the porch light was on.  At this point, I was alternating between vigilantly watching the bedroom door for anything amiss, and leaning over the headboard with my face pressed against the window, checking to see if we were being robbed from the porch.  It's funny how once your imagination takes off, it doesn't pick between genres.  Ghosts and home invasion both seemed equally as likely and imminent.  I was leaning against the window when the wind caught the door and slammed it.  My heart contracted so hard that the left side of my body spasmed and I slipped from my kneeling position, landing with my hand on Adrian's face.  He was awake now.  Words were exchanged, and it was decided he needed to go fix the light, latch the door and turn off the porch light.  On his begrudging way out of the bedroom, he turned and said 'This won't turn out well for me'.  What he meant was 'I won't be able to go back to sleep, thanks', but to someone with a self-diagnosed nocturnal anxiety disorder I heard 'The zombies are coming.  I'm going to die', and nearly peed my pajamas.

Anyways, we both made it back to sleep, and Ann let me have a sleep in.   So the moral of the story is-  the Swedes are unreliable in their light fixture design.  And I should probably seek help.