But if there's one thing we here at The House Rules are all about, it's bucking convention, progressive thought, and liberty from social conformism. (Actually, at the moment, there's a couple things we are all about but they fall under the Leftover Dessert and Serial Television on DVD categories. But excluding those, we're all about the convention bucking.)
So, we bring you our Christmas Decorations... well after the fact. And we successfully staged some photos of the assembly and dissassembly so that you'd have no idea what stage in the process you're looking at.
"Yeah, Christopher Nolan, director of Memento, you're MY bi-atch now!"
But I digress... As usual, one of the more successful motifs was the front window Christmas Baubles.
Now, in the interest of preserving my manhood while writing about Christmas Decorating "motifs", it should be noted that every night when we came home from work, we'd immediately plug in the front window lights while I made varying references to "My Balls" often with accompanying song lyrics set to the tune of classic Christmas Hymns from the Trinity Hymnal. I guess technically this actually preserved my obnoxious adolescent boyhood rather than my manhood, but either way its still MALE so I'll take what I can get.
Damn It! I digressed again. The point is, my parents gave us my Grandmother's old Christmas lights which had been on the family tree at the farm for as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, when my Grandmother got them, it must have been a Depression year and they must not have had copper or Intelligent Electrical Engineers.** Because the bulb sockets don't have any threads. So its a very loose form of friction that holds the bulb in place and the contacts making the circuit complete leave something to be desired. The bulbs are always going out... not burning out, just going out.
So every year, there was a standing rule in the family that every time you passed the tree you had to scan the entire tree and find at least 3 bulbs to push back in so they'd light up. If you do the math, 5 kids X 3 bulbs X 25 trips past the tree per day each = BUTTLOADS of bulb pushing.
So, It really isn't convenient to use these strings but I guess Nostalgia has reared its ugly head and made me ITS bi-atch. (Which by proxy makes Christopher Nolan into NOSTALGIA's bi-atch as well.) I wrapped all the strings of bulbs (plus a few extra from the Home Despot) around a foam ball and made these Christmas Baubles... AKA My Balls.
In conclusion, as this closeup photo shows, there is doubtless a huge fire safety issue in the way these things are wrapped around themselves. Especially when you consider that I had to connect 4 to 5 successive extension cords to power the lights from my ungrounded outlet with no coverplate in the front entry. But now that smell of overheating PVC insulated wiring will forever remind me of Christmas...Footnote**: True story... Almost all Intelligent Electrical Engineers disappeared around the time of the Depression. I'm pretty sure they're still hiding in Uzbekistan somewhere leaving the building electrical system design industry to their dumbass inbred cousins. True Story.
