Oh, that's so NOT good!

So, my bathroom vanity lights have been flickering for a week or so. Okay, I thought, one of the bulbs is ready to die, no problem. I even remembered to bring up a couple of spare bulbs from the basement a few days ago.

Then last night no lights would come on when I flicked the switch and I thought, wow, all three bulbs burned out at once, how odd, but whatever. I got up on the counter to change them and realized they were the new long-life kind and shouldn't have burned out, so switched out only two bulbs and flicked on the switch, still nothing. But something seemed odd with the nightlight that was plugged into the outlet by the sink, so I jiggled it and presto! the vanity lights all came back on.

Well, that's not right, I thought. Something amiss there with the wiring. Then something seemed to happen with the outlet and I shut the switch off, pulled out the night light and took the face plate off the socket.

Um....Even I know this isn't a good thing to see!

The inside of the face plate.

 No words needed here.

So of course I freaked and rushed to the basement to turn off the breaker. Luckily the bathroom and two back dens are on a separate one, so the rest of the upstairs was unaffected.

I have my former cubicle-mate's hubby coming early tomorrow AM to fix this--he's an electrician by trade. (He'll talk to me about my kitchen counter at the same time...which I'm still waiting to have replaced, btw.)

Anyway, I crawled into bed last night, stiff as a board with tension and afraid there was a fire in the walls, and I lay there and wondered if we all should sleep downstairs in case we had to evacuate. Next thing I knew it was midnight and I thought, well, if nothing's happened yet we should be okay. 

So the breaker will be staying OFF until this is fixed! Pretty scary, IMO.

Peace.