Undecking the Halls

There's only one thing worse than putting up Christmas lights, and of course that is: taking them down.

There's usually at least one unseasonably warm day in November when I'll get all warm and fuzzy and enthusiastic about putting the lights up. Of course my enthusiasm turns to rage really fast once I start putting lights up, only to find that 25% of the lights actually illuminate once they're attached to ridiculously unreachable places, even though they worked perfectly fine when I tested them on the ground.

This year was particularly harsh in the rage department. I got rid of some of my icicle lights because they weren't consistently lighting up. I went out and bought brand new ones so I could avoid that problem. Naturally, literally within days of hanging them on a very high gutter, the new lights would only partially light.

Then we took our trip at Christmas, and we came home to find half of the highest ones dangling vertically from the house thanks to some strong winds. In order to celebrate this yuletide treasure, I donned my gay apparel and yelled fa la la la la around the yard for a while.

Now it's time to get all of these stupid lights taken down, and in theory I should organize them in some fashion. I chose an unseasonably warm January day earlier this week, which meant it was almost warm enough to hit freezing, and my method of "organizing" the lights was to rip them off the house and shrubs and stuff them all into a pathetic pile in the garage (see photo). And that's where they'll be for quite a while, I'm guessing.

Next year I'm thinking about converting to a less-electricity consuming religion of some sort. Those Amish folks have it good.