Stubborn Much?

Who me?

Yup….my friends are once again rolling in the aisles and my facebook page is going to be a riot of hooting and chortling at my expense.  What can I say.  It’s not my fault.  I’m a Taurus.

Ok. First the Christmas tree.  That is tree number three in three years.  I wanted something very specific.  Tall and skinny, reaching almost to the ceiling and not fat at the bottom.  Year one we had a short, stubby tree because they were on sale for like $49 and they had LED lights.  It was about 5’5″. Thought we’d save some energy.  Did we ever.  I took it down as soon as I could after Christmas.  I discovered that the problem with LED lights on trees is that at night, when the room is pleasantly dimmed, you turn it on and all you can see is the lights.  They don’t throw enough light to illuminate the ornaments.  At all.  It was like they weren’t even there.  It left the gleaners the same day we dropped it off there, before we’d even cleared the parking lot.  I hope the recipients liked it better than we did.

When we chose tree two, I bought the one that said it was 7 feet tall.  I wanted it to reach almost to the ceiling.  And it did.  If you unfurled the single pine-ish bough at the top to its full length of 18″.  One branch.  No little side-bits either.  One single, lonely strand of wire and plastic.  You couldn’t have  hung a Christmas icicle off it without it bending over like Charlie Brown’s poor little tree.  Another happy family at the gleaners.

THIS was the tree I wanted.  Skinny, white lights, reaches to the ceiling.  It’s all good, no?  No.

See that string of lights in the window?  It’s one strand I’ve had forever.  Fully programmable, fits the window perfectly, the only lights I ever put in the window.  Pulled it out of the box, plugged it in and…….no lights.   GRRR……

So after a trip to Bahamas Dept. store to buy yet one more bulb-tester, because I can’t use the same one for two years running (it’s a tradition), finding a short string of lights to cannibalize bulbs from (as they only had red and blue bulbs), 2 hours and much cussing, I have a functioning set of lights.  Those are the dead bulbs.  I was going to count them but I really don’t want to know.  I do know I can’t feel the tips of my index fingers and thumbs except for when they tingle.  Those little buggers are jammed very very tightly into their sockets.  Ask me how I know.  But….

I have lights.   By Santa, I have lights.