It's not perfect, of course -- the kitchen could use an update. So could the master bathroom... for some reason, the previous owner of this unit completely renovated the guest bathroom, but left the master bathroom as is. The bland circa-1999 (I'm guessing) decor is pretty boring and dated... but it's roomy, it's functional, it's a bathroom -- I can't really complain.
But the one thing that HAS bothered me since we moved in is the bedroom light in the ceiling. I actually rarely use this light, since we have a couple of lamps on bedside tables that usually suffice. But I do use the ceiling fan -- I am, apparently, part polar bear or emperor penguin, because I like it cold when I sleep, and the fan helps to lower the temperature in the room. So every night, I turn the fan on, but keep the light off. And most nights, this works out just fine...
Every now and then, however, for absolutely no discernible reason, that light in the ceiling decides to turn itself on. It is quite disconcerting to fall asleep in a dark room, only to awake in the middle of the night to a brightly burning light bulb. Especially when no one has actually turned it on. And it's even more alarming if I'm not quite asleep yet, and the dark veil provided by my eyelids is suddenly pierced with glowing incandescence. It's like my mom has stepped into my room to wake me for school after I've overslept... Except, like I said, NO ONE IS THERE.
This tends to startle me so much that when Rick is traveling, I either sleep without the fan on (so the switch on the wall is off altogether), or I wear a sleeping mask to entirely cover my eyes, so I can't see if the light suddenly turns itself on.
The logical part of me knows that the phantom light is probably just a wiring issue of some sort, and my condo is NOT haunted by a ghost who really wants to read a few chapters of a good book or work on knitting a scarf. But recently I've noticed that when I use my white noise machine, every now and then (just like the light), it switches itself OFF in the middle of the night. So now I have a randomly illuminating overhead light AND a randomly silenced white noise machine. I've used the white noise machine a lot over the last few years, so it could just be that I need a new one... but still -- now my ghost-that-doesn't-really-exist wants silence, too (presumably to concentrate more thoroughly on the book and/or knitting).
And then last night, I woke up at around 2 in the morning and heard a strange whirring noise. It took me a minute to realize what it was, but I finally figured it out -- my dishwasher was running. This one actually DOES have a logical explanation (I think) -- Riff has a habit of jumping onto the kitchen counter right above the dishwasher... and sometimes, his back feet don't quite clear the counter, and he ends up hitting a button on the dishwasher. So if the dishwasher is closed and locked (as it was last night, because I'd just run it earlier in the evening), he's apt to turn it on. I'm really hoping this is what happened last night, because by the time I actually woke up and heard the dishwasher running, Riff was curled up at the end of the bed sleeping peacefully.
So yes, I honestly do love my condo. But sometimes it really freaks me out... :)
1 comment:
I think all houses have odd things that go bang in the night! We've had the radio suddenly turn on at about 3.00am in the morning. That was scary.
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