I'm having visions of every blond joke I've ever heard running through my head.  (And being blond my whole life, I've heard a few.) I've just had a hell of a time changing a couple of light bulbs.   So of course the joke that is playing on repeat is the one about a blond and a light bulb.

[caption id="attachment_1396" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The troublesome light fixture"]<img class="size-full wp-image-1396" title="Lights" src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/dsc01194.jpg" alt="Lights" width="500" height="375" />[/caption]

Q: How many blonds does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Five. Two to get a chair, one to get drinks, one to get a radio, and another to call daddy for help.

A: One. She holds the bulb and the world revolves around her.

A: One. All she needs to do is ask the first guy she sees to change it for her.

A: One. But she has to be pro-conservation and willing to exchange her old, energy-guzzling regular bulbs for energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs. Who said blonds are stupid?

Well for this blond it took: me, the internet and some major minutes standing on a chair. <!--more-->It all started a couple of days ago when one light bulb after another started burning out.  Within 36 hours, there were four light bulbs that I needed to replace.  Sweet.  So when I came home last night I more or less found myself in the dark.  This morning I knew that I had to do something about the lighting.

I climbed up on a chair to get the light bulb out so that I could take it with me to buy a new one. Only I couldn't get it out. It wouldn't twist out. It wouldn't pull out.  Standing on the chair trying to figure out what to do, bad blond jokes started mocking me.  I couldn't see how to get the bulb out.  This is a problem when you have nearly half of the light bulbs in your apartment to change.

But I am a smart girl. I am not going to let a light bulb get the best of me.  I can open jars of olives by myself--no men required. I can hang pictures by myself. I can move furniture. Still somehow, I can't get a tiny light bulb out of the socket. Gerr. Major gerr. I was determined to show the light bulb who was boss.  So I stood on the chair staring at the bulb, surveying the situation and trying everything I could think of. No luck.

Finally I decided I needed to google the problem. Yes. I resorted to googling There didn't seem to be too many other options. I googled: How to change a light bulb.  This wasn't very helpful and it made me feel silly. I know how to change a standard light bulb but I didn't know what was keeping my light bulb in.  A few searches later I realized that I might need to push in and twist the light bulb at the same time. Wala! I finally had it out.  But here's the embarrassing part. It took me at least 30 minutes to get the first one out.  Luckily the others were much, much faster!!

[caption id="attachment_1398" align="alignleft" width="500" caption="New Light Bulbs"]<img class="size-full wp-image-1398" title="Light bulbs" src="http://www.karolinkabulgaria.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/dsc01198.jpg" alt="Light bulbs" width="500" height="375" />[/caption]

I had no problem buying the light bulbs.  I asked: do you have this? and revealed and old light bulb. Yes. Okay, I want four. Four? Yes. 15 leva later I was all set.

Now there's light in my apartment again! But at what cost?! The real problem isn't that I had a hard time getting the light bulbs out of the light fixture. The problem now is that I can't get the blond jokes out of my head.  Oh well.