When I put away the Christmas lights last year, I was careful to do it in such a way that when I got them back out, it would be easy to unwind each individual strand and place them easily on the tree, this year.

I hadn’t counted on the fact that almost every strand has blown a fuse somewhere, and that some of them are only lighting up half the string, some are lit at each end but not in the middle, and some are blinking even though they contain no special magic blinker-bulb.

If anyone can figure out how to pry open the fuse thing on these lights, for heaven’s sake have mercy on me and get over here and do it for me. I’m trying, but I think the fuse thing is a fused thing. I know I’m on the right end because it says right on there, “Fuse Thing.” There are also some numbers on there but I never pay any attention to those.

There is no trap door for fuse-changing on either end of these lights.

Oh well. I’m stringing the lighted lights on the tree and dropping the duds down the middle. It will look odd in the daytime, but at night when the tree lights are glowing in the darkish room, nobody will see the dregs of lights. It will be perfect, as are all glowing Christmas trees at night.

People tell me that I should get a pre-lit tree, but those, lovely and handy as they are, do not have enough lights for me. Besides, my tree is twenty years old and has been promoted to the status of “heirloom” now. There are many people who think it’s a real tree.

It’s beautiful from the road, too.

Maybe this will be the year I clean out the guest room closet so people can hang their clothes in there. The closet in Zappa’s old room is full of dead computers and electronics, but those can be carried down to the garage. I wonder if I’ll really do it. The Christmas boxes have been living in there but since I’ve got them all out, it would be easy to put them back in the other closet. If I got the dead computers out of the other closet.

Boring, boring, boring.

Sowwy.