<Rainbow Heron>

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

1 Partridge...2 Pear Trees

We have 3 Christmas tress, but we don't use one of them anymore cuz it's too big. We bought (excuse me, *I* bought) the third (excuse me, *second*) one just this year. So both trees are mine. Yes they're both fake and they're both about 4 feet tall. One's green and the other one's a white fiber optic tree with 3 color disk options. In my opinion, when we move out of this house, we should get a place where we can keep the third tree (and not sell it like we've been threatening to do) so we can put our older ornaments on that one cuz I like to put MY ornaments (read: Hallmark) on my green one, and my snowflake/angels and what would've been Christman symbols on my fiber optic tree. Boy I wish I had had the time to make the Christman symbols this year!!!

Anyway, the point of this post is not to talk about the tress this year (but we did see that Extreme Christmas special this year that featured the Christmas House in the Bronx and that other house with the 20-50 or so Christmas trees- I'm NEVER doing 50!) but one particular ornament which I got last year: the Death Star ornament. <everyone snickers>

Okay, this year, one of my radio stations, B106.7 (I need to add links to those on the sides here) is doing nothing but Christmas songs from the 20th to the 26th. Solid. Nothing else. So I'm playing some of my own (I played the radio when Mom got home but I'm ahead of myself here) which are religious songs while I'm getting the actual trees up...and of course the lights. I have 3 ornaments that plug into the lights and I leave them plugged into the lights all year so I don't have to futz with them. I keep their boxes tho cuz the DS one has "instructions" and these being "keepsakes" and stuff well...anyways. We all know about "the lights" right? I mean, one of my favorite "Christmas" tunes is the 12 Pains of Christmas by Bob Rivers. I wait ALL YEAR for that song- I'm serious and yes the lights are my fav part of the song! Why? Cuz I am NOT STUPID ABOUT MY LIGHTS! I pack 'em smart so they don't get tangled up. Much. I put ties around them so they stay put and I put 'em in plastic Ziploc bags and this year I went and labeled stuff. I went nuts last year on the bags and went nuts on the labeling this year.

So there are 3 things special about the lights this year. First off: we have 3 strings of lights. Actually we have 2 kinds of lights but we don't use the biggie bulbs anymore and in fact I think we've ditched those. We used to put those on the real trees back when we had real trees up in DC. Anyway, we have 3 strings of lights. We haven't used the 3rd string in years because when we bought (I can't be sure if I bought that tree too...I just know it's my tree) the green tree it only needed 2 strings so there's been this one string in the bag doing nothing for what, I dunno maybe 3 years now? Meanwhile, the 2nd string has had the second half of it dead for the past 3 or 4 years. Yeah, "one light goes out, they all go out" kind of thing only half of them went out and a couple of them need a lot of coaxing and prodding in order to work just long enough while your finger is there but other than that, they don't affect the rest of the strand. The important thing is, one strand HAS to go on top, and one strand HAS to go on the bottom, and the second half of the second strand HAS to be the excess that goes from the tree all the way to the outlet. Got the picture? Good.

Now back to the ornament for a moment. No wait, I have to do this out of order, skip the ornament for a moment, back to the strands: I have a pet peeve about strings of lights, especially ours. I don't know if this is universal, but our lights only have 4 colors on them and they're patterened. Orange (amber) - Red - Green - Blue - repeat ad nauseum. This means that if you wrap them around the tree in a certain way, you're gonna either get the same colors repeating themselves in stripes going straight down OR diagonally like a barber shop's peppermint stick thingy. I HATE THAT!!!! If it had 12 or so colors and where COMPLETELY randomized (the the 3rd disk for the fiber optic tree- ooooooh I love that disk!) I wouldn't be complaining! But NO we've got 4 PATTERNED colors. Which means we (that is, *I* since *I* am now COMPLETELY 100% in charge of the trees- they're mine all mine now, cuz after all, they *are* *my* trees!) have to string them juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust right.

I stink at stringing lights. My aunt Cathi however can string lights. She's a natural at it. I don't how she does it. You can't see the strings at all. The wires don't suffer and even tho the colors are patterened on hers (okay her mother's- well the tree is anyway) you can't tell it when you step back or look up too close. My aunt Cathi can string lights. I have to suffer and redo stuff and futz and fuss and practically do brain surgery to make extra damn sure I have the colors exactly where I do and don't want them AND make sure that they STAY THE FREAKING PUT! I'm scared the tree will catch fire (yes the plastic tree)- that said I don't like having to bend the wires of the stringed lights. AND I don't like the fact that when you take the trees up and down you have to bend each and every little single branch back and forth all the time. Folks, this is how things break and fall off. I don't like it when things break and fall off. Glue is not a fix-all and duct take looks like shit on a tree so I don't even try that. And now that I've got a fiber optic tree to boot (yes I've had stuff break off of the green tree already and no I don't plan on losing anything off of my brand new beautiful gorgeous white & colorful tree at this time) I've got to worry about fiber fillaments in addition to the wires and plastic branches. Ugh.

So now I'm threading wires, looping cords, bending branches, getting aggrivated over the fact that I forgot which was the bottom strand cuz I was so distracted that I forgot to plug the thing in while I was stringing so now I have to go back and REDO IT *after* I label it, etc etc etc and to top it all off, I've got an ornament that won't shut the fuck up!

So I'm listening to Michael W. Smith, Jars of Clay, and Amy Grant while stringing my tree and almost the whole time there's there near-constant "As you can see my young apprentice ~*::CsSSSZZZSSSSST!~* As you can see my young appren- <::crash::> As you- ~*::CsSSSZZZSSSSST!~* FIRE AT WILL COMMANDER!!!!" So I turn the music up. Eventually I get a little sick of hearing the mayhem amidst the sacred cuz after a while a little something started creeping into my head and it went something like this:

<sigs etc enter room to decorate .sigerette tree>

<.sigerette tree plays CAGZ while they decorate>

It's Christmas at ground zero "As you can see my young apprentice..." there's music "...your friends..."in the air. "...have failed..." The sleigh "...Now witness..." bells are ringin' and "the firepower of ..." the carolers are singin' while "...this fully armed..." the air raid sirens blare. "...and operational... It's Christmas at ground zero" "...battlestation!" the button "FIRE AT WILL COMMANDER!" has been pressed. <!!CRASH!!> The radio just let us know that this is not a test. ~*::!!CsSSSZZZSSSSST!!::~*


<Ianpuff:>"Now THAT'S an Endorance test! ;-)"

Sounds great here on the blog, but when you're trying to sing something sacred and profound, it gets a little...well...I put it back in the box. And then I made a map of all the Hallmark boxes in the filebox of Hallmark boxes so that we can put all the boxes back in the box in the right places so that there's plenty of room for future boxes amoungst the boxes in the box because there are so many boxes that the box is in danger of becoming full if you don't put the boxes back in the box the right way.

So after I got the jolly grey singing profound light bulb of doomsday out of the way (the X-Wing and Millennium Falcon got to stay), I needed to replace said socket with another bulb(*)- prefereably the one I originally took out. So I looked back into the old bag of replacement bulbs and de-socketed bulbs still in their socket shorts (or whatever those plastic thingies are). Further on down the first string's line, right at where it connects to the second string actually, the colors go out of whack by going out of their pattern. Drives me nuts cuz it ends up going something like orange-red-orange-plug-orange-red-etc. Looks like hell on the tree. About 2 tiers (stringwise around the tree) down, there was a little something going on where the string went wacko again and there was a green missing. It's been that way for a few years and I'd decided I'd had enough. So I took that extra baggie and went looking for the missing green. Wasn't there. So I went to the end of the second string- the end that was plugged into the socket. There are 3 missing bulbs at that end and no the colors aren't right down there either. But it had a green bulb. So I did the old switcheroo. I put the green bulb where it belonged. I put the extra bulb down at the end and put some extras from the bag into the open sockets down at the bottom. I thought to myself "considering how long this half's been out, this is probably moot. This thing ain't a-gonna light up." So I looked away for a split second and when I looked back up, of course, naturally- IT HAD LIT UP!!!! OH JOY!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YIPEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! <everybody's happy and celebrates> <.sigerette tree looks so cute with all its virtual decorations>

Do you know what this means!?!?! It means that we don't have to rush the last strand's worth of lights on the tree this year! That's right! We get to break out the THIRD STRAND!!!! YAY!!!! Of course we must keep with our tradition, so naturally the second half of the third strand doesn't work, but hey, IT WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE HAVE A LIGHTED TREE!!!!!!!!!!! And the ornament shut up! (It's also still in the box, at the bottom of the box full of boxes.)

Let there be light indeed! :-) And no they don't blink. :-)

Now, as for these faux candle lights we bought last year which we intended to put in the widows...they plug into the sockets and the sockets are too far away from the windows, are too bright and only light up when you turn off the lights. In other words, they won't work here. Oh well.

(*) <Ewanpuff:>"How many Death Stars does it take to change a light bulb?"
<Seanpuff:>"Well considering how there were only two of them..."

posted @ 7:06 PM  |   0 comments  |