Half Light, et. al.

Well, so far with all the storm stuff---how long have we been at this now; could it be 10 days?---we happily report few catastrophes. With vehicles housed in the new building, Bill has been able to drive the tractor out the door and get right at the plowing. I've been able to take the 4-wheeler out the door and down the lane for hay.

The Ritchie heated automatic waterers work---almost too much. Horses get warm noses when they drink, but they drink, and that was important yesterday because they stayed inside the barn all day while the wind whipped up continuously and furiously outside. I shoveled horse apples four times during the day and sat inside peeling orchard apples for cobblers during the rest of the day.

As the continuous storm surges on, Annie Dog has taken over the straw bed in the barn as her own. She likes it better than the couch and heater in the garage---probably cuz Lily's her horse, and Lily's stall is right next to the straw bed.

Doggies and kitties have done a lot of hunkering down, and humans have made necessary trips outside to do what needs to be done. It's hardly recreational going outside in this wind that continues to blow, although it's not blowing quite so briskly this morning as yesterday.

The biggest catastrophe to date has occurred inside the house on the Christmas tree. I was getting a lot of static last year about why I was still using those two strings of old, old Christmas lights on the tree.

"Time to get some new ones," they lectured, after noticing that I was using rubber bands to stick the lights to the limbs and also hoping that someone could find me some replacement bulbs for old-style Christmas tree lights in town.

Well, somehow when said Christmas tree decorator takes down the tree after all Christmas tree critiquers have left the scene by tree-removal day--either on or before Jan. 1---the last thought on said Christmas tree decorator's mind is to go buy a new set of lights for next-year's tree.

With needles all over the place and more needles sure to be all over the place after ornaments and lights have been ripped from the tree limbs, the immediate goal is to get all that stuff in a plastic bag, get that tree out of the house and get the vacuum cleaner to suck up all remnants of Christmas tree circa whatever year it happens to be.

So, this year when it came to decorating, I found the two plastic bags right where I put them---better luck than my initial search for all those outdoor lights. After plugging in the light strings and seeing that they do, indeed, work again this year, I found more rubber bands to secure more old bulbs with newly broken plastic clips to the limbs.

This year's plastic clip to rubber band ratio is about 35:65 percent, but you can't really see the rubber bands unless you're a Christmas tree critiquer, looking up close and personal at Mom's annual patch-it-together efforts.

I've been fortunate for the past few days because Bill thinks anything I do with the Christmas tree is beautiful. That's mainly cuz he doesn't have to do it and because the work and the cussing is all done while he's off at the office. So far, Bill and I and a few birdies at the feeder are the only living beings to witness the Lovestead's 2008 living room Christmas tree.

The crowd will come, though, and unless I do something fast, they're going to notice something odd about the one string of ancient lights with rubber bands on this year's semi Charlie Brown hemlock special. The other string was removed from the tree last night after it burned out. I checked it several times to see if it was just kinda tired or something, but it never came back to life.

So, this morning we have a half-lit Christmas tree, and I've already heard a lecture from a relative who hasn't even seen the tree.

"You still have those old lights," she said to me last night when I told her the string of lights had died. "When are you going to get some new, nice little lights?"

To which I told her that I was a little leery of removing the old lights cuz of the rubber bands and all the potential needle loss. I also told her to spread the word that if anyone entered my house and insulted my Christmas tree, it would be war. She promised me that she would spread the word. Good sister Laurie.

Later, I tried to put a string of outdoor twinkle lights----removed from the chain link fence around the dog kennel in the midst of the blizzard---on the tree over the top of the bad lights. It looked just as ugly as you can imagine. So, I removed that along with several hundred needles and walked away from the disaster.

Later after calming down, I came back, determined. Carefully pulling on individual rubber bands, I slowly removed the dead string of lights. It was at the bottom of the tree. My next plan was to get a night's sleep and think about the next move in the morning with a fresh perspective.

When I came to the living room this morning, I saw that Bill had plugged in the lights. And, Bill usually doesn't plug in the Christmas lights. He's usually following me around, unplugging them.

I commented on the half-lit tree, and, the ever-positive Bill launched into a commentary on why the tree was pretty: that its absence from the forest had opened the way for a healthier forest which means a healthier treasury for the state's forest funding, which means more money for the schools and with more money for the schools, Idaho should have smarter kids---all because we removed skinny Hemlock from the grove.

That made me feel better because, of course, I believe in schools and smarter kids, and if our ugly tree leaving the forest contributes to the coffers, we have done a good thing. And, my sister who knows not to say anything bad about Marianne's tree is a teacher, so that's all the more reason she'll keep her mouth shut.

But then, there are the other Christmas tree critiquers who will be arriving---if they ever get out of Seattle, which is appearing doubtful cuz I heard this morning on K102.5 that if travelers wanted to fly home from Seattle, they would be smart to come to Spokane to get on a plane, when and if a plane becomes available----anyway, if they ever make it home, they may be tempted to say something about my tree.

So, I might make a trip to Home Depot today and see if there's anything down there that resembles my one old string of Christmas lights. If I find it, I'll bring it home, carefully attach it to the bottom of the tree, plug it it, rejoice at once again having a fully-lit Christmas tree, and, surely, the critiquers will never know the difference.

Unless they're stuck in Seattle with nothing to do and happen to be reading this blog, of course!