Breaking Cardinal Rules of Noreen Lemon and the Disasters that ensue...
It feels cathartic to peer through my fully lit Christmas tree and gaze at the majestic mountains beyond, but the journey to this moment was tumultuous. Maybe that is a bit overdramatic for the story that got me to my simple accomplishment of a fully lit tree.
Some of you may recall last years story in which, I discovered that the lights I had purchased the previous year had given up on life just like the lights the previous year and the year before that and... you get it.
Here is an excerpt:
We have some unknown, mystical, adverse effect on Christmas lights. Every year for the past forever, we have to pause while putting up lights and run to the store to buy new strands of lights because two or more don't work when we unpack them. Same thing this year. They should have a warning on all boxes of Christmas lights: "DISPOSABLE: DISCARD AFTER ONE USE or pack away with the false hope that they will work in 12 months."
When I returned home from the store this year, the girls had laboriously placed lights on 2/3 of the tree. They then laboriously placed the two strands I bought on the top 1/3 of the tree. We stood back and realized that the top 1/3 had way more lights than the bottom 2/3, but - oh well! We left it.
Until the next day...
Upon turning the lights on, we realized, to our mortification and dismay, that the bottom 2/3 of our tree was completely dark, while the top 1/3 of our tree sparkled like millions of tiny diamonds.
Luckily, I convinced the family to not put the tree in the window this year, to save us from rearranging the furniture.
Every day, I looked at that tree, and pondered if I should run to the store and get more lights to rescue Christmas, and then come home, take all the ornaments off, take all the old strands of lights off, put new strands of lights on, and replace the ornaments. I just couldn't quite convince myself to do it, although looking at that tree every day did prove a bit depressing to one's spirit.
Bringing us to this year, Black Friday. Of course I didn't solve the Christmas light debacle before Black Friday, because I am a procrastinating perfectionist mess at times. And of course everyone wanted to put the tree up, but that required lights which meant I was going to have to break a cardinal rule of being Noreen Lemon: "Never leave the house on Black Friday!" All of you with your hands raised right now ready to proclaim the joys of the amazing rush of Black Friday can lower your hand and know that my list of why I don't go is longer, and in my opinion better than your list. (Note the above story in which it seems as if I broke the cardinal rule is not as it seems. It was not Black Friday, it was earlier, and I went to Walgreens which may be an exception to the cardinal rule. It's not really a Black Friday hot spot, you know.)
How I ended up being jostled around by a crowd of shoppers and employees with two 6 year olds (my niece included) and two teenagers in tow in the Christmas aisle at Hobby Lobby on Black Friday, can not be explained, but it was terrifying. I can only describe the scene as madness and the state of my soul - panic.
Did you know that the Christmas lights at Hobby Lobby are directly across from the door to the back room in which everything is stored and from which dedicated Hobby Lobby employees come and go every 15 seconds faithfully? I'm not sure how many times, I plastered myself up against the shelves of Christmas lights with the two six year olds, so that the dedicated employees could roll their carts behind me to restock shelves for the deeply insane shoppers that were present that day.
Because I was in search of THE PERFECT Christmas lights labeled that will last the rest of my life, which could not be accomplished in the current setting, I left sans Christmas lights with two six year olds proclaiming how unfair it was that I did not buy them treats.
The solution to my dilemma was to drop off the six year olds, which weren't extremely helpful on this current mission anyway. I may have had to remove one of them from my car and drag them, quite literally, into the house. Ahhh, now I could think. Now, where can you get THE PERFECT Christmas lights on Black Friday?
Target, which in retrospect, may have been a worse solution than Hobby Lobby. As I drove around the Target parking lot realizing that all of the cars in the parking lot represented bodies in the store, the Hobby Lobby panic set in. So, I parked the car and ordered our lights on Amazon to be delivered the next day. I weighed the options and realized that facing my 6 year old with the news that we could not put the tree up that day was less terrifying than the aisles of Target.
So here I sit with a beautiful, very bright Christmas tree strung with LED lights with the best reviews I could find on Amazon. I couldn't find any with the guarantee "Will last the rest of your life, or we will come to your house, take the decorations off your tree, take the janky lights off your tree, put new lights on your tree, redecorate your tree and vacuum all the needles that were dislodged on the floor." This will have to do.
Lessons learned from the Christmas Light Debacle Part 2:
6-year olds do not make missions easier, but they sure do make them memorable.
Breaking cardinal rules of Noreen Lemon should only be done for tampons and toilet paper.
Searching for something perfect for Christmas may be the antithesis of Christmas.
Christmas lights are not Jesus and therefore will break and will fail as will all other things and people that are not Jesus, including me.