February 13th, 2020

The ceilings in our adorable little house are not particularly high.  I mean they are builder standard for the year it was built (1962) but I suppose in the grander scheme of things, that's not so high up.  Still to me they are plenty high.  If I cannot reach it, it's high enough.  But then I suppose most ceilings are high ceilings in my world. So you cannot go by me.

Our house in Colorado had really high ceilings.  I could literally stand on the kitchen counter  to touch it.  Oh, why was I standing on the kitchen counter?  I was painting the kitchen.  Obviously :)  So that means the ceilings were more than two of me.  So that means...Oh Gosh..this sounds too mathy...  Umm...I'm 5'2" to twice me is 10'4"  (is that right?)  So the ceilings must have been more than 10 feet high right?  And then in the foyer and the family room the ceilings soared two stories up.   Oh gosh, more math...so 20 or so feet up?  Something like that anyway.  It looked sort of like this:

It was a big house.  More than twice the size of our current home and visually, each room seemed even more spacious with those high ceiling.    Even for people like me who do not technically need the extra headroom, it feels grand and open and well, you feel like you can breathe in a space like that.

I'm sure from the house's point of you it was kind of silly.  At my just cracking over 5 feet high, against those wall I was only a quarter of the way up.  I probably looked like a small child in those rooms.  And yet, when we built the house, that's what we wanted.  Why?  I think we just liked the way it felt. I cannot deny how lovely those high ceilings looked.

The only two rooms with the 20 footers, as I said, were the family room and the foyer. But every other room, first floor, second floor AND basement had the...what did we decide?  10+ foot ceilings of course. 

And the entire time the house was being built, it never once dawned on me, that somehow I was going to have to clean all of those really tall, super high up, glorious windows. Dang!  

And deal with cobwebs and clean ceiling fan blades (dust loves to accumulate where it's hardest to reach)  Double Dang!

Also didn't think about changing the lightbulbs in the A) can lights in the family room and B) chandelier lights in the foyer.  Triple Dang!

Too, I never once considered the changing of the smoke detector batteries. Double Double Dang!

The windows high up?  I tried once to clean them, nearly fell off the extension ladder and came close to accidentally breaking a window with a misplaced ladder so the high parts never got cleaned again.  Lived there for 10 years.  Only completely clean windows were the ones I could reach with a normal ladder.

I will confess, I don't think I ever cleaned a single ceiling fan blade in the family room.  I stood on the beds to get the ones in the bedrooms.  Cobwebs had to fend for themselves.  If I couldn't reach it with a broom, it just didn't happen.

The lightbulbs got changed three times.  Once when we were having some other work done, the worker left their scaffolding up for several days and Tim (ahem) borrowed it to change out lightbulbs and he changed them ALL, working or not!  Another time Tim did haul out the big extension ladder but it turns out that when you lean a big old metal ladder like that against a pretty cream coloured wall, it leaves a mark.  A very obvious mark.  One that has to be painted over every single time.  The third time the bulbs were changed by a kindly electrician who was doing some other work in the house for us.  He noticed that the foyer chandelier was down to one working bulb and he offered.  I said yes so fast........

The smoke detector batteries on the other hand.  You absolutely have to change those because the beepbeepbeep or chirpchirpchirp will drive you crazy if you don't.  And of course,  the whole safety thing.  Just so you know,  changing those batteries when your have those way high ceilings is a major pain in the arse.  Necessary but still.

I was thinking about this recently because it happened here.   I was sitting right here, probably writing my blog, when I heard a chirping sound.  And then it stopped.  Then it started up again. And then it stopped.  It got a little louder each time.  Finally I got up and tried to figure out where the sound was coming from.  I honestly didn't recognize it at first. 

At long last, all the marbles in my head fell into the proper holes and I remembered Smoke Alarm battery!  Ah Yes.  

And so I began, what my friend Jan calls, The Smoke Alarm ChaCha.

First I had to figure out which alarm was chirruping.  Which means standing underneath each one, waiting for the noise and eliminating one at a time until I find the culprit.  It was in the guest room.

Next up, haul out the step ladder.  Yup, just a little old step ladder.   Just three steps up and I'm there.  Lower ceilings y'see.  Still I'm not happy on a ladder. Any ladder.  But one does what one must.  So up I went.  

Then I set about fiddling with the smoke detector trying to "detect" how to open it.  After some time, I accidentally removed the cover which I tossed on the bed, then fiddled more with the battery trying to determine how to remove it.   Without breaking the entire unit I mean.  I do have a history  of accidental breakage, after all .

Finally I get the battery out.  Ahhhh blessed silence.  Next I had to rummage in the various drawers seeking the replacement battery.  To my surprise and pleasure we had one!  Yay!  But only one so I'm glad there was just one needed.  

Back up the ladder to figure out how to get that battery in.  Once I succeeded with that, back down the ladder to retrieve the cover.  Back up to, eventually, figure out how to put the cover back on.  The back down the ladder, put it away, and add 9V battery to the grocery list.  Taadaa!

Even though that was a lot of upping and downing, it was SO MUCH EASIER than in our Colorado house with it's lovely high ceilings.  Make no mistake, I absolutely adore the look of lofty ceilings but not so much the inconvenience.

So anyone who feels so compelled can diss our not all that high ceilings any time they like.   At least I can replace lightbulbs, wash windows and stop the chirruping of the smoke detector in this house without first learning how to levitate. 

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