My parents are out-of-town, visiting my sister in California for her 51st birthday. They called the other day from Las Vegas. Apparently, they decided it would be fun to take the short drive from Bakersfield, where my sister and her family live, to Las Vegas for 3 days. They were looking forward to seeing all the sights.
My grown niece has been staying at their house but Deanna had to go up today to water all the plants. Grandma pays her to look after all her plants each time she and Grandpa hit the road. Don took all the kids late this afternoon and headed up the street.
Several hours later, the children finally burst through the back door. I was amazed at how long they had been gone.
"Where's Daddy," I asked, not seeing him as the children streaked by, heading for the T.V.
"He's still at Grandma's," Dane yelled over his shoulder. "He's working on the Christmas tree lights."
It was quite some time later before Don appeared. Later, while we were both in the kitchen, cleaning up after the children wolfed down some food before heading for the Den and "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition", which was a 2-hour special, Don said, "I can't use my thumbs anymore."
"What are you talking about, honey. Why can't you use your thumbs?" I asked.
"I took two strings of lights off Grandma's tree. Every single light had two clips connecting it to the tree. I took off so many clips, my thumbs feel like they're going to drop off."
I laughed and recommended he rest his thumbs. After the children were in bed, Don brought out a plastic bag and began pulling out a string of lights.
"We will NEVER have a pre-lit tree," he stated emphatically. He plugged the string into an outlet to begin the process, once again, of trying to figure out why the lights wouldn't work.
Low and behold, the lights all lit up. Don grumbled and then began to tell me how he had worked for two hours trying to figure out why they wouldn't work on the tree before he decided his only option was to remove them - thus the sore thumbs. Now, here they all were - lighting up just fine.
Unable to quite abandon this project, as I'm typing, he's working on light strings. I'm not quite sure what he's doing to them, but I'm sure they'll be much better when he's all done with them - unless, of course, we run out of weekend before he gets it all done. At least he's got an extra day in the weekend. Looks like he might need it.
4 comments:
We had the same problem with our pre-strung tree. I was devastated when, a week before Christmas was even here yet, I noticed that some of them had burned out.
Bless your husband for having the patience to try and figure out which ones aren't working. When we took our tree down, my husband jammed(literally) the tree into it's box and said, "I'll look at that next year." I'm sure when the time comes he'll wish he had been as fastidious as Don.
Your stories always give me a chuckle.
We have a prelit tree as well. We noticed 2 bands of lights were out. My hubby went to Walmart and got one of those light testers. It tells you which bulbs are bad. We used that and fixed the problem.
Thanks, Tallahassee lassie. We just found out about them from my brother who looked at us like we live in the dark ages. Oh, well. We'll get right on it before we put the tree back up in another 11 months!!!
As I was writing that Post, I had a feeling I might elicit a lot of emotion from readers. Few things seem to be as much a bone of contention between husband and wife as Christmas Tree lights.
At least, next year when you get the tree out, it'll be fresh and you won't be anxious to just get it put away. Things always seem to be easier at the beginning of the Season than the end.
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