A fried light switch out of a set of three outside the kitchen. A package delivery. Time to play electrician. He had as a teen done the wiring for the addition on his parents’ house, the work duly signed off on by the inspectors, so a simple light switch shouldn’t take very long.

Mutterings commenced.

That plate had a really terrible edge on the inside where nobody was supposed to ever see it: sharp and wavy. The wrong lights flashed on and off when he was sure he hadn’t even touched that wire. The insulated screwdriver hit the floor.

He looked at me and in a self-mocking tone pronounced, Tarnation.

Now there’s a Southern cuss word for you, I told him. Thinking further, I wondered if I’d ever heard a northerner Yankee type say such a thing (we lived in New Hampshire for four years.) I was pretty sure I had not.

He thought maybe yes they had.

The short, great linguistics debate of the evening (feel free to chime in–that way one of us will find out we were right.)

And now I have my kitchen lights back and everything works the way it’s supposed to and nobody can see the inside of that plate.

Meantime, my new zucchini stem had twins this morning. I have never heard of such a thing before.