More on the light fiasco

Before I tell the tale of our family holiday light display, perhaps a little background info would be helpful. In April, Ben and I sold our house in Ames in favor of a new Beaverdale crib. Not being from Des Moines, I did not know much about Beaverdale other than it had lots of businesses in it with names like "Beaver Mower" and "Beaver Cleaners" that people made fun of. And it had lots of brick houses. "Beaverdale bricks" to be specific. I certainly had never been on Wallace-Ashby, or my current street, which is directly adjacent to Wallace-Ashby, before. But everyone we knew who was originally from or had lived in Des Moines said the same thing when we told them where our new house was located: "Oh! You will have to put up some really good Christmas lights to live in that neighborhood." Apparently people drive slowly through our little part of Beaverdale when it comes time for holiday light-based entertainment around these parts.

Oh shit. Ben and I -- two of the bigger height-phobes on the planet, came to a quick realization: We had just bought an extremely tall house in the alleged Christmas light mecca of metro Des Moines. Add to this equation Ben's quasi-Griswaldian compunction to keep up with the Joneses and my apparent ineptitude at stringing any sort of multi-hued bulb affair in a symmetrical fashion and we have ourselves an interesting situation.

We had planned to string up the lights on Nov. 27, which was a very balmy day and the day most of our neighbors were putting up their lights. Sadly, we were in a serious funk that day after returning from the ISU football game in Lawrence, Kan., the day before. Ben consoled himself with golf all morning and didn't even go out to get the 32-foot ladder we needed until after noon that Sunday. Needless to say, when Ben finally returned with the ladder strapped into the back of a friend's truck after placing a $300 crack in his windshield (32-foot ladder + VW Beetle=not such a swell idea after all), he wasn't much in the mood for holiday cheer. We went to the afternoon matinee of Good Night and Good Luck instead

So that left last Saturday. The day. I had purchased about $150 worth of lights over the past week, and obviously we had the ladder. Upon realizing there were no electrical outlets on the outside of the house, Ben hired an electrician to come out and install them Saturday morning while he worked on the more artistic aspects of the endeavor. This was becoming an expensive proposition.

It was about 14 degrees when Ben ventured out to start the project that morning. Quite a contrast from the 50-degree temps we'd had the previous weekend, but who can get in the holiday spirit when it's nice outside, right? I, who had stayed up most of the night reading, was still asleep at 9 a.m. when Ben bellowed up the stairs at me. "Honey! Can you do me a favor?"

I snapped awake, embarrassed to still be snoozing at 9. "Sure, I'll be right down." When I got outside I realized it had begun snowing.

The favor ended up being TRIP #1 TO THE HARDWARE STORE. Here I go.

On the first trip I looked for, but did not purchase, little tiny hooks and brown outdoor extension cords (could not find).

So I tried a bigger hardware store (TRIP #2 TO THE HARDWARE STORE)

There I purchased some little tiny hooks but no extension cords. All they had was yellow, forest green, lime green, grass green, orange, red, and hot pink. (hot pink?) Apparently brown extension cords are the "socks with sandals" of the exterior illumination fashion world.

So it was back to the house, where I dropped off the hooks and immediately swung back around to go pick up my stranded friend, Steffen, who had called while I was at hardware store #2 to say he needed a ride. On my way home from taking him and couple of others to get their car at a nightclub, I relented and bought the forest green extension cords from the first hardware store (This occurred at TRIP #3 TO THE HARDWARE STORE).

I was just back at home getting ready to helpfully make some hot cocoa for Ben and the electrician when Ben summoned me to make TRIP #4 TO THE HARDWARE STORE. At least Ben went with me this time after I nearly blew a gasket when he said he needed 6 to 8-inch spikes to anchor the ladder. (Spikes?) Thank goodness he went along, as I would not have known that nine-inch nails were an appropriate substitute for six- to eight-inch spikes. Rather appropriate, aren't they? Considering the fact that someone was about to be crucified. Ahem.


So I went back to my cocoa. Later, when I stuck my head out the front door, I found our good chum Matthew standing at the top of our ladder (anchored with giant nails to the ground, of course), pinning hooks and attaching lights to the wood trim at the waaaaaay ass top off the house. Where was my faithful Clark Griswold? Standing on the ground. Turns out he started up the ladder, nearly peed himself, and retreated back down as the fear of extreme heights overtook him. Weird how that works. Matthew, on the other hand, is not a threat to chicken out -- seeing whereas he's the same guy who once jumped off the roof of his house while clutching two 80-pound bags of shingles in his left mitt.

Steffen also came over to help, so I offered him some of my marvelous homemade cocoa. Yes! A taker on cocoa! Unfortunately, the cocoa had been sitting on the stove for a while and had built up its own protective shell, which Steffen urged me to just "scrape off." For some reason my pea brain decided it would be easier to strain the cocoa. Of course straining cocoa is difficult to do when you are straining the liquid part directly into the kitchen drain. I stopped myself just in time to salvage one decent mug of the stuff. Yes, add this to my list of brunette moments -- right next to my reference at Thanksgiving to the "three-finger discount" which resulted in my husband and brother running around my mother's house attempting to figure out exactly what types of items one might be able to steal with three fingers. Which was funny. But I digress.

TRIP #5 TO THE HARDWARE STORE came around 3 p.m., when Ben and Steffen convinced me that we needed some additional mounts for the light bulbs, and some sleds so that we could celebrate later by hurling ourselves down the icy slopes of Waveland golf course with only a 1/8-inch-thick piece of plastic to hold on to. Dutifully, I made my final hardware trip of the day as they finished attaching lights to our garage (the piece de resistance of our project).

It turns out we were too tired and frozen to want to go sledding, so Steffen and I slept on the couch, watched football, slept on the couch some more, and then watched another football game (oh yeah, and slept on the couch) while Ben finished hooking up the light timers, suspending the ladder from the ceiling of the garage, and snow-blowing the driveway. (Thanks, honey.) Then we gorged ourselves with beans and rice, brisket, sweet potato pancakes, andouille sausage, beer, cabernet, cream cake, and bread pudding. Hooray for the Flying Mango. Oh yeah, and we watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation to cap off the evening.



Now we just have to figure out who is going to take the lights down this January. Any volunteers?

My night at the cat whiz seminar

Tonight, in the latest installment of my Glamorous Life, I attended a free seminar at the vet school about feline urine and fecal material. I'm serious. Actually it was pretty interesting, with the exception of the part when (and I am not making this up) a woman in the audience described her hemorrhoid pain in graphic detail.

Moving along, I thought I'd share a few things I learned from the seminar:

• The best enzymatic cleaner for removing the presence and odor of cat pee is actually called Anti-Icky Poo
• If you rub a cat's jawline with a cotton ball, you can pick up enough of its scent to rub it on another area in the house where you don't want it to whiz
• If you need to move a litter box, your best bet is to move it two inches per day until you get it to its new location
• You seriously can train a cat to use the toilet, Focker. Even though it doesn't have opposable thumbs.
• It pretty much does no good to ever try and discipline a cat. They don't think that way.

Oh yeah, and I should be nicer to my cat. She did not pee on my carpet because she hates me. It's just how her pea brain rolls.