A little light fun

Yesterday was unusually warm, plus we had very few things on our schedule, so the day was just perfect for hanging our outdoor holiday lights. I gathered these varied packages from the attic crawl space and carried them downstairs, thinking my next purchase needs to be a single large storage bin that holds all of these. We have purchased many more holiday lights in recent years, I think perhaps in response to the gloom and doom of the pandemic, and also because we have a little more time on our hands for decorating now that we are both retired. I placed all the bins right next to the front door, and went to fold a load of laundry, promising to join my husband with the outside decorations when this task was done.

A short while later, I stepped outside. Tony was working on the side porch, stringing lights along the banister, and there was a wild web of light strands on the front porch step. Hmm, I thought, where did that little pile of light chaos come from? I'll leave those for him and work with my new favorites, those easy "reel" lights. Last year we purchased some new lights that were packaged on a reel, making it very easy to wrap a shrub in holiday cheer by simply unwinding the container as you work, virtually eliminating tangles and knots in the wires. 

Except, now I couldn't find them. 

"Tony, where are the new lights we got last year? The ones on the reels?"

"They're right there, on the front steps."

"I don't see any reels here."

"Well I put those away after I took the lights off of them. The lights are right there at your feet - see?"

Wait, what?
Talk about flipping a switch.

"Wait -you TOOK THEM OFF THE REELS and MADE A RAT'S NEST FOR ME, so that I might have the THRILL of untangling them!?"

He looked at me patiently and calmly asked, "Did I do something wrong?"

"Well, goodness, I thought the whole point of those strands was their ease! You simply hold them and unwind them onto the tree as you go."

"Oops. Sorry. I didn't know."

"Aiyiyi."

Honestly, I am a little surprised how quickly my mood can change. 

I was having a lovely day - and then I really wasn't. 

I was SO ANNOYED. 

I really dislike MAKE WORK. 

I took a few deep breaths and set to work detangling those all-too-familiar webs of lights, reminding myself 

what a little thing this is,

how good it is that we are working together out here, 

this is such a beautiful warm day, and
the grandkids will be so excited by the lights. 

Let. It. Go.
It took a few minutes, but soon I was back in the spirit, with just a few muttering musings crossing my mind -  how do we so quickly wind up at cross purposes with one another? 

Soon, all the lights were up, but several of our shrubs were still without any decorations. Wait, we decorated those shrubs with the new solar lights - because they are far removed from the outside outlet. We hadn't unpacked any solar lights yet...where were they?

"Tony, did we store the new solar lights someplace apart from all the others?"

"We might have. Let me check the garage."

"I'll recheck the attic."

There ensued about 30 minutes of searching, up and down the stairs, all around the house  - the garage, the bike shed, the attic, the basement closets. Nothing. Na da. Gone. 

This "fun decorating" was really turning into a very sour time. Where in the world were they hiding?

Time for another activity! I put on my gardening gloves, grabbed my shears, and started working in the garden. The remaining light of the afternoon would be spent with miscellaneous other outdoor chores. As the sun set, the few lights we did complete came on, making the house partially cheery (just like I felt). I put away all the gardening tools and went back inside. I turned on a lamp in the front room and saw two bins of solar lights sitting right there - at the front door - where I had set them before running my laundry. 

Oh my! We went all around the house and yard, but never looked right inside the front door. Ha!

Our holiday lights will be completed when the stars align. 

This was NOT the day!

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It's Tuesday and I am participating in the

 Slice of Life.  

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for nurturing teacher-writers!

Archeological dig

All this time at home has freed us to see what needs fixing, what needs changing, and what we can cull. Being retired is an added bonus - because we have the time to follow through. 

The past day or so, we've been tinkering with a small, narrow closet - adding and painting new shelving, adjusting some coat hooks. One set of coat hooks was set up for when our children were about three feet tall - and they have never been changed since that time, rendering them basically useless (unless you are partial to the look of floor debris clinging to the bottom of your adult coat). The shelves in the closet are (were!) - sadly - simply a series of stackable plastic bins, hastily set in place as a temporary solution right after we remodeled 30 years ago. These bins were immediately filled and overflowing with the stuff of daily living, and the original idea of adding 'real' shelves long forgotten - until now, that is. 

This closet is located right next to our side entrance, our main door to the house from the driveway; thus, these bins were the depository of all those things one takes off and gets rid off as soon as they enter the house. Coupled with a door that closes, hiding the ugly truth from regular eyes, this location became a treasure trove of forgotten artifacts. 

I set about emptying the bins themselves - what's in there? what can I toss? what belongs elsewhere? - while Tony began sawing boards for the shelving. There was so much forgotten junk in these shelves! Ugh! Suffice to say, I threw more things away than I saved; I had a small pile of donations. Lots of paper trash. (There is always so much stray paper in this house.) I was surprised by the "singles" - three separate gloves, each from a different pair, no match anywhere around; one single flip flop from a teenager (in other words, at least ten years old); one slipper...where are their matches? where did they go? why is it here and not the bedroom? I also found a pair of children's gloves. Itty bitty hands. No, they are not my grandchildren's. 

Here's a fun new chapter to this storytelling: I decided to wash this small find for future use by said grandchildren, when - I kid you not - only one small glove made it OUT of the dryer. What? Two gloves are washed and dried but only one comes out? Where did the match go? Do gloves have feelings? It's as if they cried out - 'what, you ignore me for 20 years and expect me to hang around now!?'

Sifting through the debris of this one little closet has sent me on a rampage through the house, culling, tossing, weeding, and organizing. I even spent some time in that truly forgotten space - our attic, opening up bins and clearing out clutter. It is amazing what time can do for these stored memories - yes, there are many things that I still love and want to keep, but there is a whole subset of extraneous, much less meaningful stuff with which I am easily able to part. I am excited for our trash pickup this week! 

Isn't it wild, though, how you can hold a piece of paper - say, a handwritten note, or an old ticket to a concert, or a child's drawing, and instantaneously be transported back in time - seeing where you were, hearing certain songs, remembering how you felt? 

We often joke that it's been thirty-plus years of deferred maintenance on our home...truth is, these years have flown by. Now, in this quiet 'stuck at home' interlude of the pandemic, we can finally focus. It's almost like being on an archeological dig, right? (Yay! I am traveling!) 

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I wrote this post for Slice of Life.  All participants are writing about one moment, one part of their day, on Tuesdays. Thank you, Two Writing Teachers!