On nights like tonight, when I come home and Adam is not home (he's in Providence more and more, preparing for Bright Night, of course), I realize how thankful I am for our lights. It's something one might really take for granted - having the right lights, and the right light switches, throughout the house. But because our lights were really hard-fought, and because I now feel safe and secure while walking up to, and through, the house, I'm especially appreciative. Just the other night Adam and I were lying in bed, looking at the walls in the master bedroom and contemplating what the room looked like when all the walls had deep trenches running through them where the wiring was going in. (Yes, sadly, we do talk about these things in bed.) We remembered fondly how the old wonky light switch was hidden behind the bedroom door (on the wrong side of the swing), and how the weird pull-chain fixture hung right where what's now the archway to our unfinished master bath. We waxed nostalgic about making decisions about power outlets. And we regretfully admitted that it would have been smart to run a DirectTV cable through the wall at the same time, so we could move the television to the center of the room. But really, a few misplaced (or nearly missing - in the case of the sunroom, which we didn't schedule an outlet for and had to have a handyman install, haphazardly, near the very end of the first wave of renovation) outlets are really the only problem with our electric. It's a miracle that we've got what we've got, since we figured it out purely by instinct while in the throes of the dust and mess. Amazing that we have three-way switches so we can turn on the light at the bottom of the stairs and turn it off when we get upstairs. Amazing that there is an outlet in the pantry to plug the Dustbuster in to. Amazing that there are lights in every one of the closets on the third floor. And, it's all especially miraculous considering that our electrician didn't speak much English, and we speak no Spanish. Willie the electrician, wherever you are, gracias. You did us good.