About a month after I gave up looking for them and a full 12 days after the holiday they were intended to represent, I found my lost bin of perfectly good Christmas lights.
Ho ho holy cow! They were right there all along.
“Right there” being on an obscure basement shelf along with about 37 other nondescript green bins, at least one full of baby clothes for someone who hasn’t worn size 18 months in 23 years.
Who saves that?
The same person who, apparently, saved a separate bin full of half-lit Christmas lights and broken strings thinking she would deal with them next year. So, lucky me, that’s the bin I pulled out this year on Outside Christmas Decorating Day, well-known among my family members as Flee the Premises Day.
On that day, I tested every one of those strings and nets and determined them faulty. I cold-heartedly junked them and quickly headed off to find replacements before my holiday cheer expired.
“Can you believe it?” I asked the nice checkout person supervising my self-checking scanning at Home Depot. “All of my lights from last year were broken!”
She could believe it. Or she couldn’t hear me. Or she just wasn’t interested. Either way, she just nodded blankly and waved me on my merry way.
I selected bigger bulbs for this year’s display, figuring they’d be hardier. I’m not sure that logic makes sense now that I’ve had time to think about it, but it seemed like a good plan a month ago. I am happy to report that my new big bulbs lasted throughout the season, which has not always been the case for me. One year they didn’t even make through that first night.
But, this Christmas we had a reasonable display that held its own in a neighborhood full of excellent holiday decorators.
Buoyed by that triumph, I uncharacteristically made plans for next year. One very early morning last week, I even tucked my sleep-mussed hair into a baseball cap and schlepped off to Wal-Mart to buy a bunch of lights on clearance.
I felt a little cocky as I pulled out a bin to store my new stash of lights.
And, that’s when I discovered all the lights that had eluded me when this whole sorry tale began.
Oh what a tangled web we weave when we store our lights for Christmas Eve.
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