Let Your Light So Shine . . .

An update on Middle Monkey's hand: Nothing is broken! He just has to buddy tape his pinky to the next finger for a while until the strain heals, apply ice and take ibuprofen. It looks like his music career has not come to an end.
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Today I'd like to post about monkeys and their use of electricity. Being simple creatures, they do not understand the concept of pay-as-you-go. In fact, they don't much understand the concept of "pay". They know that they want money. But as to the finer points of earning and spending it wisely, they are clueless. They take many of our modern conveniences for granted. I'm sure that they believe that electricity, water and heat are all free. After all, these things conveniently appear at the flick of a switch or turn of a handle.

My morning routine does not follow a June Cleaver time table. I'm sure that June rose before the sun, formed her hair into an attractive boufant, donned her heels and pearls and hurried down to the kitchen to prepare breakfast and bag lunches before her family grunted through their last snores of the night. (I personally think that June never slept, or if she did, she slept standing in a broom closet in the kitchen.) My schedule, however, often finds me at the computer working late hours. I often don't get to sleep until well after midnight, and most nights it's more likely to be 1:00 a.m. before I finally am able to thud into unconsciousness. The first monkey gets up around 5:45 for his 6:30 departure for school. After that, Kong gets up, then the Monkey Prince at 6:18, and lastly the Middle Monkey. I have boys who know how to cook or at least, how to pour cereal into a bowl. Kong is useless in the kitchen, but after 21 years of marriage, he can complain all he wants about my not having a steaming plate of bacon and eggs for him each morning. I know he tells everyone in the office that I don't make him breakfast, and that's perfectly true. However, he neglects to say how many times I've made breakfast only to have him turn it down saying that he doesn't have time to eat. Somewhere around year 4 of marriage I decided that I wasn't going to play hit-or-miss breakfast with him. Besides, he doesn't need the added cholesterol in his diet, and I need the sleep. (See, honey, I'm only thinking of our health!) Add to this picture that there are four man-sized monkey-males using two bathrooms over the course of an hour or so. It's a jungle beyond my bedroom door, and I'm not going out there! I get up around 7:15 when the last one leaves.

As I've mentioned before, I am blessed to have a work-from-home job. My commute is a simple walk downstairs to my computer station. Pajamas are perfectly acceptable office attire, and I have no office mates to complain about my not brushing my teeth until after I've had a cup or two of coffee in the morning. But I do not roll out of bed and go straight to work. Each day I must patrol the island to survey the damage left by the monkeys' early morning preparations. Bathroom sinks and floors are splashed with water. Wet towels are left piled on the radiator . (I know that's you, Kong!) and dishes are piled on the counter above the dishwasher where the monkeys assume that simple osmosis will cause the dishes to be absorbed through the formica and deposited into the dishwasher to be cleaned.

But the very first damage control that I have to perform is the electrical stand-down. Every glowing electric-powered item in the house is left on: bathroom lights, bedroom lights, hallway lights, kitchen lights, living room lights, dining room lights, family room lights, televisions, radios. If a boy or man passed by it, it was turned on. Perhaps they can't resist the magic buttons and switches that make light and sound appear. I can't help but feel guilty that I taught them to do this by providing them with toddler toys that squeeked, lit up, and danced about with the push of a button. It might be the result of baby conditioning. Those toys should carry warning labels! "This seemingly harmless educational toy may cause your electric bill to skyrocket in years to come."

What really aggravates me is the lighting. I have to peer into a room and examine lampshades each morning. Are they glowing? Is that a bit of brightness coming from the top of the lampshade? The rooms are flooded with morning sunshine. Window blinds are open and God's glorious gift of warming sunlight streams in to show us the paths which we must walk throughout the coming day. What 75 watt bulb can compare to that? There is no puddle of light on the floor or soft glow surrounding the floor lamp in the family room. It's meager offering is overpowered by the brilliance of natural, and yes, FREE illumination. Yet there stands the lamp, valiantly trying to strain against the growing sunlight that rises out of the east with the passing of each morning-minute. And the stinking lamp is costing me money! This scenario is played out in each room of the house as I walk through snapping off lights, switching off television sets, and shutting down the Monkey Prince's continuous connection to talk radio.

Try as I might, I cannot seem to change the monkey habit. I think the clicking noise of on/off switches is too attractive to their simple sensibilities. They must, MUST turn the knob, push the button, flick the switch. They can't help it. What puzzles me, however, is why they never try to repeat the process. They like to see the light go on, but it never occurs to them that they might get the same pleasure from switching the light OFF. Or maybe they just get bored easily. I think that's it! They see it once, and that's the big event for them. After that, they walk around oblivious until they walk out the door. My only comfort is that someday the monkeys will move on to islands of their own. But I want to be there the first time one of them opens an electric bill.