"Simple Joys" or "More Than You Would Ever Want to Know About Our Bedroom Lights"

As Gregory continues to leave his abilities behind, I continue to creatively compensate. When I am successful I feel very good. When I am not I feel hopeless. How's that for mood swings?

We have always had lamps by our bedside. Perhaps the new condo was a little darker then we were used to, what with the concrete ceilings and all, so we added two "up lights" on top of my computer desk and two on top of the bookcases on the other side of the room.

The switch on the wall controls, as in most modern buildings, one side of each double outlet. So when plugging in your fixtures, use the correct side of the outlet and you can control all of the fixtures in the room with one click.

I used to call them lamps but in the architecture world, lamps refer to bulbs while fixtures refer to lamps. Get it?

Now the switch concept works well but when you are in bed, finished reading, half asleep and ready to call it quits for the evening, getting out of bed is a pain. You could pop out of bed and switch them off individually or at the wall switch by the door to the bedroom.

When the need arises to turn on a light during the middle of the night, one could kill themself  in the darkness on the way to the lamp or wall switch.

Being a creative person, I rigged up the bedroom lighting into two switched extension cords, one of which controls the lights on Gregory's side with the switch at his bed table and the other on my side. This way we could turn off all the lights at bedtime (and on if necessary during the middle of the night.)

In the morning turn them back on at our bedside tables and the entire room of lights can again be controlled by the switch on the wall.

Following all this?

Slowly Gregory could not figure out how to turn off the lights on his side of the room. He could not locate the switch fastened to the back of his table and if he could find it, did not know how to work it. One night he could, the next he couldn't. It was a case of diminishing returns with the "not able" increasing and the "able" decreasing. Finally I would hop out of bed and do the light thing.

Next, I discovered a system at the hardware store whereby the extension cords could be plugged into a remote button. My side worked the same way (since I do not have Alzheimer's) and Gregory got this little box where he just had to push the ON button or the OFF button to control his lights. I was so hopeful.

The new system worked for only a little while and not without confusion. Which one of the buttons was the ON button and which was the OFF button (even though clearly marked.) And, "Where did I put the damned box anyway. Can't find it."

I felt bad taking over the lamp lighting ceremony but Gregory didn't seem to mind. First  I did my switch then I pushed the buttons on the little box to do his side of the room. "Good Night. Love you."

Next I got to thinking, in my "Control that in life which you can since there is so much you cannot," mood. Wouldn't it be nice if I could control all of the lights, since I was now in control of them, with one switch instead of several plus the little box. In high end homes, often there are additional switches on the wall by each side of the bed in addition to the wall by the door to control the outlets.

Wouldn't that be nice just to roll over and with one flick of a switch control all of our bedroom lights? I had our electrician in for another small job and proposed my plan to put a switch on the wall by my side of the bed. "Can be done he said but you would have to move your computer desk so I can get at the outlets behind and run the new wire."

I was not about to unload the desk and all of its millions of wires for the "wireless" network so I killed the idea. But my mind kept working and eventually I came up with a way of using those same switched extension cords to unite all of our fixtures. It works. All I had to do was plug Gregory's cord (with switch on) into my cord (with me controlling on and off,) attach it to my night table and now I fully am in control. Every night when I say "Good Night and Love You" I feel a little spark of joy at being able to control all fixtures with one flick.

P.S. You may be thinking that the bedroom looks like a wired mess with all these extension cords, which any electrician will tell you can be dangerous. Well no. They are minimally few, encased in wall mounted moulding channel covers, and as safe as can be. My dad would be proud of me (considering he was an electrician.)