Out of the box

About five years ago, in a place far, far away called Florida, I thought it would be a great idea to buy icicles lights for my windows... ones that hung inside, with little sucker thingies with hooks. This, I reasoned, would prevent me from endangering myself on a stepstool hanging Christmas stuff outside, and more importantly, keep me out of the 90 degree heat.

And though it was a ridiculous notion that icicles could actually form in Florida, I thought they were kind of classy -- not the colorful ones or the ones that blink maddeningly, because, well, real icicles just don't do that. For drug-free people.

The problem with these damn icicle lights in Florida: There was so much humidity, it was almost impossible to get those sucker thingies to stay in place, and over the course of a day, they would slowly slide down the window, gathering up the sand and dust that gathered on the pane on a daily basis, and by Christmas time, all the sets were back in the box.

Fast forward to today, when I crack open my tubs of Christmas decorations, and I have the bright idea that, hey, these might work here. I had enough for all the windows in the front of the house, and I gave it a go.

It was really smooth sailing until the last window. Not only did I have an impossibly heavy TV-occupied armoire in front of that window, but THIS window frame was different from the others, with little room for the needed tape to keep the damn things up. (I had long ago pitched the sucker thingies.)

To keep Zoe from hearing words she's never heard before, I kept taking breaks from that last window, but determined to MAKE IT WORK, I went back four or five times with different kinds of tape, a chair, a step stool, a ladder. I taped them to the window, but anyone who has tried to make tape stick to a window when it's below 50 knows this is an impossibility. I finally busted out a hammer and some brads....

But before I started nailing, I thought... why not just tape these fuckers to the inside of my blinds?


And so I did. Welcome to my house, don't look at the trailer trash window over there.

The first time they fall down, they're going back in the box.