Let There Be Light

Today my daughter had 4 teeth pulled... Four Adult teeth pulled... Not wisdom teeth, first molars. Her orthodontist has been trying to straighten her teeth for a year now but there's just not enought room in her mouth to make that happen. It seems we, as a race continue to develop a mouth full of large teeth, while our pallets our shrinking... Who knows, maybe our entire heads our shrinking due to the effects of the dumbing down of modern day society... Case in point: T.V. shows like Paris Hilton's search for a new BFF or that WTF show 'Jackass'... Hey, it's Evolution folks!

Wait, did I just suggest that my daughter had to have teeth pulled because she's part of the dumbing down of society? No, that's not true, she's never watched an episode of Jackass or Paris's show. Oh, forget it, now I'm just rambling.

Anyway, between changing out blood and saliva soaked gauze pads, what I really wanted to talk about today is Christmas lights. I LOVE lights. Ever since I was a little girl and my dad would take me to Disneyland*, I would dream of the day I could cover my own trees in tiny white lights, especially lights that twinkle!

Last year I blogged about our pre-lit Christmas tree and how the lights upon it were giving up the ghost. We'd had the tree for 7 yrs. and it was a good run but what fun is a tree which has half the lights dead. Sure you can put other strands on top of the dead lights BUT dead lights on a tree aren't hard to miss and to me they seem to scream 'Pathetic Christmas Loser.'

So, a couple of weeks ago the family, excluding myself, sat around our tree for over 3 solid hours removing all of the lights. Now this may seem like it should be an easy task, but 3 HOURS folks! There were literally thousands of little clips on the tree, securing the lights in such a fashion that a tornado wouldn't be able to rip them off. Though fingers were nearly bloody stumps at the end of the process of denuding the tree, everyone was pleased that we'd saved ourselves at least a $150 for not having to purchase a new tree and did you know that non-pre-lit trees are almost impossible to find?

So, with our 7 yr. old tree now free of dead lights we went to the store and purchased my favorite lighting option, white twinkle lights. Now before I go on here, I'd like to share a memory. Growing up in the 70's I remember helping to decorate the family tree. It wasn't pre-lit, there was a box full of limbs, each limb had a color on it's wire tip which you inserted to a matching colored hole on the trunk, then you spread the branches uniformly. It was a tedious process.

Now the lights, the lights were, in a word, UGLY things. They were the size of door knobs and had every color of the rainbow... Red, Yellow, Blue, Green, Hot Pink (yes, hot pink!), Aqua, Orange, etc. But I'll tell you what, thos UGLY lights worked year after year after year. Sure maybe you had to replace a doorknob size bulb every once in a while, but I sure don't recall my parents rushing out to buy new sets of lights every year.

Which leads me to my lovely twinkle lights.... Half of them are dead! Yes, our Christmas tree is currently half-lit... And if another strand of lights goes, that's exactly what I'm going to do... Get myself half-lit... Because then my eyes will blur and the tree might appear brighter and even if it doesn't, I won't really care.

Oh, and don't EVEN get me started on the lights in the garland on the banister. Grrrrrrrr! Freakin' cheap-ass Christmas lighting.



*For those who might never have been to Disneyland, at night, the trees light up with thousands of white twinkle lights, making the atmosphere even more magical. Disneyland at night, with my dad, is a treasured memory.