So yesterday we found a crack, 6 inches of water, mold, smells, cold, some bad lines, some wasted product, and a little blood. Look, life isn’t perfect. Sometimes you gotta adjust your stance and hit the curve. It’s a new day, new energy, time for round 2!
Feeling good and rejuvenated after a nights rest, I was ready to leave the crazy day one behind me. I needed to run an extension cord to the upstairs balcony and attach a timer so all the lights come on at the same time (a wifey request, makes a lot of sense.) I climb the stairs, stroll out on the balcony, move a potted plant and a chair, get down on a knee and try to plug in the timer. Only one problem, it isn’t plugging in! Hmmm, I think to myself, this piece was not soaking in water and looks perfectly like new. I look a little closer, only to find that one of the prongs on the plug was literally bent in a 90 degree angle. Not I’m not just talking the prong itself had leaned over the left a little bit, and you can bend it back with your fingers. I’m saying that it almost looks like somebody took pliers and bent the prong in half! It was super strange, and to this day I have no idea how that could have happened, but no biggie we’ll fix it. I lumber down the stairs and dig through the tool box for pliers. I bend that little sucker back into place and I race back up the stairs again to make up for lost time. It plugs in and it works!
See, no more Griswold moments, that was yesterday. This was just a strange something, no big deal. Or so I thought.
I want to get more of the yard down before I grab the staple gun, so I march back to the lights on the lawn and grab all the “bush lights.” For any of you that know what those net lights are like, they’re pretty neat but they can get pretty tangled too. So I carry only two at a time to the backyard, making trip after trip, to avoid the tangles. After grabbing another extension cord to test the lines, I find that bush net lights #1 is burned out. Bummer! Oh well, I check the fuses, and they are in good repair. So I have a choice, find that ONE burned out bulb, or throw it away? I don’t have time for this, so I just toss it. Then I plug in the next one, nothing. Serious!? I plug in the next one, HALF lights up. The next one, again only HALF lights up. Are you kidding me!? It’s starting to feel like Griswold round 2! Well I’ve already thrown out 2 bush lights now, 2 regular strands yesterday, and I’m not going to let these remaining “half-lit” bush lights go to waste. So, I take the good bush lights that I find, put them on the bushes, then just put the “Half-Lit” bush lights in such a manner that they overlap and appear like a full set! Not bad right?
Ok, no more yard. It’s time to work on the house and make some real progress. So I grab my staple gun and head to outline the garage w/ lights. I have two boxes of brand new #50 staples sitting on my work bench shelf just waiting for this adventure. Only one problem, I could’ve sworn the stapler I’m holding in my hands takes the #25 staples, so I check. Yep, gonna need #25’s. I look everywhere, nothing. I am so determined to find these staples, I end up cleaning my entire work bench area hoping to find the right sized staples. Nothing. Ok look, I don’t have time to run to Home Depot and there are still a few staples in the gun, so I’ll skip every other light and try to get this done. Sure enough, the sun is going down and it’s getting dark and cold again. No biggie, I am going to finish this project! Staple, skip a light, staple, skip a light. Things are going pretty good! Until the staples run out that is. Yep, we’re out. BUT, while cleaning my work station I found plenty of single and double staples that had broken off their line. I was bound and determined to finish, so I grabbed a tiny little hammer and started hammering these single staples (that would not work in the staple gun by themselves, without a block of staples behind them.) Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. I am hammering staples over these light wires, in the cold of night, to finish the daggum job!
Now I am standing in the yard, looking at the roof and having some serious doubts. I look at the fence line…Lit! But came at a cost. I look at the bushes…Lit! But came at a cost. I look at the roofline again (2 story), and I’m thinking that this year, there is just too much Griswold happening to me, and I’m not sure I want to tackle that roof! Lord knows I don’t want a cat to chew through one of my lines, start an electrical fire, and maybe have a ladder fail me.
I think I’m going to throw in the towel! Merry Christmas!
-Chad
Leave a Reply