It Was Bed Time

With Kelsey gone this week, I'm supposed to be on blog duty. I failed that endeavor tonight. I got home from class, played with my poor dog who has been home alone all day (except for the twenty minutes I had between class and work), and went to bed. I did that rather thoroughly, so I suppose that fits for Thorough Thursdays. For the second consecutive week I don't really have a project I completed to write about. Except...

This past weekend I was finally able to take Christmas lights down. It was sort of sad in a way. I like Christmas lights and am not really sure our use of them makes any sense. I wish we had them lit longer. For some reason we put them up in December, a month where no one is outside to enjoy the lights, and we stop turning the lights on in January. This confuses me because we can't take the lights off our houses until sometime near March when the weather warms up.

While this blog probably won't change the world, I'd like it to change every single person in America's approach to Christmas lights. Here is what I propose:

One, we put Christmas lights up in May and keep them there until September. People actually sit outside during the summer. It would be nice to have some extra light. Just think about all those hot summer nights in the big city. You'd feel much safer with a bunch of twinkling LED light strands. We would continue to call the lights, "Christmas lights," even though they are now technically summer lights. Future generations will forget why they call the summer lights Christmas lights when Christmas is six months later. We will have been on the ground level of a delightful anachronism. Good for us.

Hey are you guys there? It sure is a nice summer night, but it is so dark. I wish I could see you.

Two, for the dark winter months that make everyone sad and depressed, we will put a lot of inflatables that dance in sync to various pop hits from the eighties. Music can be piped in through the tornado sirens. Wouldn't it be great to drive into a neighborhood during the second week of December and have a motorcycle riding Santa Claus inflatable bobbing his head to Cutting Crew's I Just Died in Your Arms Tonight? Obviously it would.


Three, during the summer months no nativity sets will be allowed. We don't need a lot of plastic baby Jesuses all over peoples' yards. There are actual babies and kids outside in the summer. If we put a lot of fake babies outside, it would just confuse people. Besides, the sun would just fade the paint and the heat would probably crack the plastic.

The summer heat will crack me my child. Please leave me indoors.

Four, all the inflatables will be kept inflated throughout the winter. The music will stop piping through tornado sirens on New Year's Day when Americans and the inflatables dance in unison to Auld Lang Syne. It will be up to each individual city's mayor to declare a "take down the inflatables day." If there is a mid-January weekend with unseasonable warmth that will be declared Deflate Day and the yards will be cleaned up. NO EXCEPTIONS. NO EXCUSES. NO FEAR.

So yeah, I took the Christmas lights down this past weekend, and I'm very proud of that. I'm also proud of how I just revolutionized what I call Yard Art. I'll try accomplish a real project between here and next Thursday!