On the Eighth Day of Christmas

My true love gave to me – a repaired strand of 100 lights. I was decorating the tree, lights first, and half my lights would not work, so I proceeded to get down six new sets I had bought after Christmas a few years ago. Then, we discovered many lights missing along with no more blinkers. So I went to the store yesterday and bought bulb replacements. We did not realize those bulbs have to be put into their little socket that goes down into the strand itself. So, my dear husband sat down last night and this morning and took all the old sockets (those with missing bulbs or broken ones) and re-threaded them with new bulbs. You have to take two small wires on the end of the bulbs and put them down through a small hole and thread into individual small holes. That is not a job I could do; don’t think my eyesight or my shaking fingers would help on that one! I tried fixing one that I accidentally pulled out of the socket and could not get it back in there.

I suppose you can call this act either an act of kindness or perhaps an act of saving money! He had first suggested I buy all new lights, which could have been costly. But, I invested $3 in replacement bulbs, a much cheaper adventure! It is funny that they have lots of little fuses for the strand that we have never had to use, but only put 2 of each – flashers and clear bulbs – in each pack of bulbs. Anyway, since we have discovered that we can actually fix those little bulbs, I guess that will be what we do each year rather than buying new strands.

After all the threading those tiny wires through the whole to have enough blinking bulbs, and getting them on the tree, we decided we had rather have a non-blinking tree. So, we went through the tedious job of finding all those small, hidden blinkers and replacing them with clear bulbs. And, in the process, the lights blew the fuse a couple times in a strand – too much of a load on them. So, my husband had to find another extension cord to take some of the load off the other one. But, it is finally finished as you can see. It looks much better in person – all the apples are not in that one place. They just aren’t showing up on the picture.

Linked at Christmas Alliance 2007 - Random Yak
Conservative Cat

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