Technical Difficulty (Subtitle: Me vs. the Tree)

A week ago today I engaged in the time-honored tradition of bringing a live tree into my home and adorning it with lights, garland and ornaments.  Though I live in a studio apartment, I still purchased a six foot balsam.  (I go for tall and narrow--like a super model.  It works.)  It is a lovely tree, and nothing beats the fresh pine scent.

An additional time-honored tradition, for my family at least, is to use copious amount of lights.  I used 1,000 lights on my tree.  I fully expect a call from NASA soon letting me know how nice my tree looks from space.  In illuminating my tree, I take the time to individually wrap each branch in lights just as my dad does with the tree at home.  To paraphrase a quote from Christmas Vacation, I learned everything I know about indoor illumination from my father.  Once the lights were on, I added the star garland and ornaments and spent my weekend basking in the glow of my lovely tree.

Then Monday came.

Monday afternoon I was sitting at the table next to the tree working on my computer when I noticed that the bottom half of the tree was no longer illuminated.  What the heck?!  It didn't make sense.  Even if one light--or even one string of lights--was out, that shouldn't impact the rest of the lights.  What was going on?

I should say now that my family has a history of issues with Christmas lights.  When I was a kid, Christmas lights were horrible.  If one light went out, the whole stand went out.  My father would routinely choose the coldest, snowiest, windiest day to put up the outdoor lights.  He would bring out the boxes of lights and start working on them in the family room.  If a strand was out, he would check the strand, light by light, until he got the whole thing working again.  Then he would head out into the blustery tundra to illuminate the house.  Within ten minutes he would be back inside covered in snow with a strand that was no longer working.  Sometimes he would get lucky and he wouldn't have to remove the entire strand to fix it.  More often than not, though, he would spend the entire weekend putting up lights, taking them down, fixing them, putting them up again--and so on and so on and so on. 

My father does not often curse, but my mother and I were both aware that the weekend of the lights would be rated PG-13 due to language as my father wrestled with strand after frustrating strand.  Once the lights were all up and illuminated, my father would then come home every night after work to triage which ever strand went out since the previous evening.  If a day went by when he did not have to fix the lights, it truly was considered a Christmas miracle.

This is what I was thinking about when I saw half of the lights on my tree go dark.  I inspected the stands, and after a bit of fidgeting about, they came on again.  Not one to tempt fate or question good luck, I backed slowly away from the tree and went about my business . . .

. . . until later that evening when the lights went out again.  That is when I found out what really was wrong.  One of the plugs that connect strand to strand melted.  MELTED!  There was literally a hole melted through the plug!  Visions of dry timber going up in flames in my living room danced in my head.  Needless to say, I unplugged the whole lot.  

It was too late in the day at that point to try to fix it, and I was too busy on Tuesday.  Wednesday afternoon I went to work re-illuminating my tree.  I discovered that when the plug melted (MELTED!) the heat actually warped the set to which it was connected.  I was hoping to just leave the bad set on the tree unplugged and add a set on top of it.  With two sets bad, though, that was not possible.  I trekked to the hardware store, bought two new sets and proceeded to un-decorate my tree.

That is right.  I had to remove the ornaments, garland and lights from the bottom two-thirds of my tree.  I cannot say that I was in the most joyous of holiday moods at that point when on Wednesday afternoon my previously festive and tidy apartment was covered in ornaments and pine needles.  I also made the poor choice of taking on this project when I was feeling impatient.  Let me tell you, even in the best of circumstances it would have taken the patience of Job (or whoever it is in The Bible that was known for patience) to not get frustrated.  There was a very unfortunate moment when I broke an ornament and told the tree that I hated it.  The cat went and hid in the bathroom.  It was not the highlight of my holiday season.

Still, I re-lit and redecorated the tree.  When I was finished, I stepped back to admire my handiwork.  In the process, I knocked my Internet modem onto the floor and accidentally stepped on it.  When I picked it up an shook it, it made a distinctly maraca-like sound.  

Damn you Thomas Edison and every piece of electric-powered technology created since!