See the beginning of this story here.
Once I had the tree up and in the stand, it was time for the lights. I got out my strings of lights and tested them. The first string was fine; the second string only had about half the lights lit. So! Time to start testing lights. Bleecccchhhh.
I only had to test about fifteen lights before I found the bad one. Insert new bulb, and voila! Two operational strings of lights.
It was when I started putting the lights on the tree that I realized just exactly how pokey this tree is. Its needles jabbed me, and jabbed me, and jabjabjabjabOWWW! I have no idea what kind of tree it is; I'm guessing it's of the SHARP variety.
Oh! So then I get all the lights up (ow ow ow), and it's time for the big reveal. I plug the lights in, and ......... only about half the lights lit up. Now there was no way that I was going to start testing lights again, and these strings of lights are older than dirt anyway, so I thought I'd call it a day, and go out Sunday morning and buy new lights.
But! As I was putting the drop cloth back in the attic, I discovered a brand new box of lights which I had forgotten I even had, evidently some post-Christmas-sale purchase of years past.
I grabbed the box, took it downstairs, opened it up, plugged in the lights, and ..... success! I took down the old lights (jab jab jab) and put up the new lights (ow ow ow) and was ready for ornaments.
And if I thought I'd gotten poked (heh) putting up the lights, putting on the ornaments was a fresh new circle of hell. I tried wearing gloves, but I kept dropping the ornaments, and so I finally had to grit my teeth and put the ornaments on bare-handed, ow ow ow-ing all the way. Merry Christmas!
Oh, and as I'm typing this, I'm all, "ow! ow! OW!" because my fingers are full of pine-tree-needle punctures. Band-aids don't seem to be helping, and it looks like I stuck my hands in the office paper shredder. *sigh*
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5 comments:
Owie. Our tree is nothing more than a glorified set of green bottle brushes in a stand, but on the up side it doesn't ever tear my hands all up and is ready to be set up whenever I get the time to do it.
Your tree looks very pretty. Have the kitties left it alone? Mine climbed the tree just once (couple of years ago) and brought it over on herself. She doesn't even look at it twice now. (Watch. This will be "famous last words" and I'll be railing about the stupidity of felines shortly.)
We had a pokey tree this year too...the kids were shirtless putting ornaments on, and they learned quickly to be careful! The best thing about it is the dogs don't brush against it like they usually do, sending ornaments flying!
*So far* the cats have left the tree alone, other than to bat at the ornaments and cart the candy canes into other rooms. The Runt has been chewing(!) on those sharp, sharp pine needles - maybe he's flossing.
I will never, EVER do another pokey tree again. My hands are still killing me.
Not celebrating Christmas, I'm feeling all left out of the owie, pokey conifer fun. In the spirit of the season, I bought a set of white lights to decorate my lemon tree. Owie! Boy, does that thing have thorns!
THORNS?!! Yeeowch!
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