Not Ready For Christmas

I am so not ready for Christmas.

It dawned on me, over the weekend, that I should be thinking about Christmas now. (It also dawned on me that I somehow forgot my traditional Columbus Day holiday shopping trip. Oops. Looks like I'll have a use for that furlough day after all.)

But it wasn't until this weekend, when I innocently entered my neighborhood OSH (for trash compactor bags) and saw aisles upon aisles of holiday lights ... sitting underneath an oversized inflatable snowman ... that the impact of the entire situation really hit me.

See, the house I bought is in a "Holiday Happy" neighborhood. Which is to say, everyone here decorates for Christmas. Indeed, when I bought the house, I was given my street's standard piece of decor, and reminded to put it out every Christmas season. (Everyone on the street has the same plywood decoration -- then you go off on your own from there.)

Being, y'know, Jewish, I don't have a whole lot of experience with Christmas decoration. And, just from scoping out OSH, it appears that, even if I had been familiar with this from my childhood, things have changed quite a bit. I mean, you've got your regular mini-lights, your LEDs, and your solars. You've got your strings, your icicle lights, and your nets. All of which have their own pros and cons from an aesthetic, price, and power-consumption point of view.

I figure I'll try something simple this year -- just a line of lights along my roofline. (Probably white ones. Or those white & blue icicle lights -- that says "Winter" and "Jewish" all at once!)

Of course, "simple" is in the eye of the beholder. I mean, how do I attach the lights to the roof? How do I get the cord down to that outlet? Do I need a timer to control when they go and off? Is my ladder tall enough to get me up there?

Came home from OSH with compactor bags and a feeling of being totally overwhelmed. I was kinda pleased to discover, when I took a closer look, that there's already a row of nails running across my roofline.

It's a start.