A Trifle Bushier

So, tomorrow is light putting up day in Calgary.

Anyone with a brain in their heads will take tomorrow and put up the Christmas lights; at least the lights that will take time to hang. Tomorrow is supposed to be in the 12° to 15°C and should be just perfect for fiddling with tangled strands of lights, knotted extension cords and those little plastic clips that become brittle when the temperature reaches below 0°.

I can remember delivering mail years ago and when the temperature would dip well below freezing in early December and just hover there. It was bad enough delivering the mail when the wind was blowing the snow around in that sub zero weather, but it kind of warmed my heart when I would see one of my customers hanging his lights. I would generally talk to these guys, pretending to sympathize with them when I was giggling like a teenage girl inside. In almost every case they opted to take it easy the last nice day weather wise. The wives made them hang the lights for the kids in the cold weather. Personally, I think it was more a wifely punishment for not listening when they should have.

I saw that too often to ever get caught myself. Yes, the odd time I have had to deal with cooler weather, but that is no longer a problem. About twenty or twenty-five years ago, I met another customer hanging his lights. He was just starting when I walked down the one side of the street and ten minutes later when I was coming back up the other side, he was done. I was amazed! He showed me his system and that day I went home and duplicated it on my home. He attached the lights to boards and then attached the boards to the eaves with hook and eye hardware. It takes a little planning the first year and you have to be satisfied with the same light set up year after year. I was and am.

Tomorrow in the morning I will put up my lights. Barring unforeseen interruptions, I should be done within a half an hour. I will test them once they are up just to make sure that all is well. In years past, before LED lights, that is the time I would make sure all of the bulbs were working and replace the burnt out ones. I can now plug all the lights into one outlet and the electricity consumption is far less than one or two strands of the old kind of bulbs. I have a remote to turn the lights on from inside the house and the grandkids love turning them on and off, on and off, on and off…

The inflatable Santa and his sled will just cool his heels in the garage until early December. That’s when I know Christmas is just around the corner.

Well, that, and my beard seems to get a little whiter and just a trifle bushier.