Thoughts from the Man Cave

THOUGHTS FROM THE MAN CAVE Rigging up the LightsMy Annual Holiday Mood-Breaker

by Mike Savicki | photography by Afterburner Communications

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, you say. With the kids jingle-belling and everyone telling you, “Be of good cheer?” Is it really the hap-happiest season of all? I’m not so sure.

My frustrated and grumpy mood typically appears shortly after Thanksgiving, as I waddle to the china cabinet to put away the matching pilgrim salt and pepper shakers after finishing leftover turkey. Then it grows as I turn my mind to taking out the army of boxes containing holiday decorations. When I come upon the boxes of outdoor string lights is when my mood goes completely south.

The mess hits me like a ton of bricks. Peering through the plastic containers all I see is torture, tangles and wasted time. I notice the mysterious way in which the many strings of tiny white twinkle lights I had taken such care to roll and place gently in their perfect storage spots at the end of the previous season have morphed and mingled into an interwoven mass of knotted and twisted mayhem. How did that even happen?

The little holiday pleasures help a bit. I’m fine with the artificial tree. I don’t mind the holiday linens and dish towels, either. To be honest, unwrapping the battalion of nutcracker soldiers and thinking of new ways to arrange them to ambush any and every Elf on a Shelf placement puts a smile on my face.

Facing additional hours of untangling, I begin to wonder if I’ll get to the end of the mess to get the yard glowing by the time the red-suited delivery guy leaves the North Pole. As I remove the first plastic cover and begin digging in search of that ever-elusive plug end, I cuss the holidays for the first time. Bah, humbug. Or something like that.

Have you heard the parody holiday song lyric, “When one goes out, they all go out?” That is clearly not the case in my holiday lighting world. At one point, I counted 15,000 lights in our yard display, but now, as I plug in and test the strings, I see that number fluctuate down to low double digits. If I shake one string of 250 bulbs half of them go dark. When I straighten another string of 100, all but one dozen flicker and fade. Other strings that worked fine at the end of last year don’t work at all now. watch the high hopes I have of decorating the yard with enough glow to be visible to SpaceX quickly extinguish like an unprotected candle in a windstorm. Forget string lights, maybe this season will be the year of inflatables. I might even put one on the roof.

A couple of years ago, I remember the conversation I had with a neighbor as we were out in our yards on one of those warm January weekend days meant for taking down decorations in lieu of watching football. My neighbor, let’s call him Tony, said he was at wits end with his own unpredictable and frustrating lights and, instead of trying to roll and store them for future torment, he would be throwing them all away and beginning again the next year with new LEDs. He said they are brighter, always stay lit and use less electricity. I nodded, validated his thinking, and went about my own business.

But fast forward a year and Tony was correct in his thinking. Proof the grass can sometimes be greener. His new LED lights were brighter, and every single bulb was lit. And they stayed lit. And he used less electricity.

Sure, some nights our lights shone brightly, while other nights they looked like a connect the dots with half the dots missing. After a heavy pre-Christmas rainstorm, none came on for a week.

How do things look this year? With hope and optimism, I broke out the holiday decorating boxes a bit early. Not September early, as home stores began stocking their holiday shelves, but earlier than ever before. And I gave those holiday string light bins an extra critical look. Yes, once again they were tangled and twisted. And in keeping with tradition, there were entire working strings mixed with non-illuminating and random partially illuminating strings. Par for the course.

But I changed my mind and mindset and that has made all the difference. OK, not really. I changed the lights. Yes, I updated and upgraded. I’m all LED now. I’m calmer and more relaxed. The lights look great. SpaceX bright, no doubt.

I did hear Tony say he is thinking of timing his lights and adding music. Me? Not yet. I’m happy with that new, steady LED glow.