12 degrees below Freezing!!!!

12 degrees below Freezing!!!!

Date: 2009.12.07 | Category: News | Tags: devious norwegians,merry christmas

That’s 20 degrees this morning for those of us who worship in the Farenheit church. Cold. Cold, cold, cold, because the wind off the water just comes roaring through here. BRR. Cold dogs, frozen cats. Pitiful squirrels sitting miserably on the fence hoping I’ll spill when I fill the bird feeder. I do, of course. And I put boiling water in the bird bath to thaw it because liquid water is hard to come by for the little birds today. The dog water dish is frozen solid.

Nonetheless, today I will, for the First Time Ever (ta-da!) try to keep up with the crazy Norwegians across the street, the Marinez family, and put Christmas lights on my house! Judy relentlessly decorates her house every year, which sends my grand-children into a frenzy of ‘why can’t we do that?’

“Because I’m a writer. I work very long hours.”

“But Judy’s a nurse, and she has to be on call and sometimes she gets up in the middle of the night and goes back to work and . . . ”

“Okay, I get it.” She has lights and bunting on her eaves, a illuminated tree and yesterday she just HAD to add a reindeer. That moves.

“No, it’s only the wind, kids.”

“No, we saw it move, it moved! And all we have is that one angel light in the window.”

So I put a string of Santa Claus lights on the Jade plant and set it in the window.

“Grandma, that’s not funny.”

Okay, okay. I will put lights on the fence. Today. I have bought the lights. I have the zip ties. I have, uh . . . how long of an extension cord do I need again?

Rats.

Robin

6 Responses to “12 degrees below Freezing!!!!”

naatz 09/12/07 17:52

*whistles innocently*

|Meduza|
danniebrown 09/12/07 22:49

I haven’t put up any christmassy decorations so far, I’m not feeling in the mood this year. But at least there’s no kids around to be sad about it so it’s not so bad, is it?

It has been raining here since yesterday, otherwise the temperatures are quite warm for the season. Really warm in fact.
samaranth 09/12/07 23:23

Hello Robin,

I do love your description of the Christmas lights.

While we don’t have the ice and snow part of it (actually it’s sitting at about 33 on the Celcius scale…) there is something that hearkens back to childhood with the late dusk, and driving around the neighbourhood after dinner to watch the Christmas lights come on. Then home for supper, past the heavy scent of the gardenias in the pots at the back door, and the sweet, mouth-watering aroma of nectarines and plums in the fruit bowl, along with the tang of the radiata pine Christmas tree…

Good luck with your decorations, and I hope you have a Merry Christmas
defenestrat0r 09/12/07 23:37

I hope your decorating experience is more fun than numbing! Sounds like your weather is not too much colder than Vermont’s. I had to scrape ice off my car for the first time today (and just remembered that I forgot to take the bike inside… whoops).
michie3 09/12/09 17:44

“No, it’s only the wind, kids.” – haha! XD

It was a pain in the butt putting up lights this year since our rental doesn’t have any plugs outside, leaving us to trail extension cords out of a window (we plugged up the gap with plumber’s putty). The weather was kind though… well we ARE in Florida… I’m never going to see snow again *sniff*…

As my husband and I were finishing the lights, one of our neighbors strolled over and was all like, “Great! Now I have to put up lights!” He was pleasant about it though, I guess his wife has been nagging him to do it. Hmmm… it has been a few weeks now and he still doesn’t have any up… ^-^ ooopsie.
robin_hobb 09/12/10 06:42

And now that they are actually up and lit, they do look magical.

We had to cobble together arches over the gates as we had strung the lights along the fence top. (It’s an iron fence) Then we went to the dollar store and bought garlands to cover up our rather basic arches.

Amazing what you can do with wire ties!

So we were all pleased. And I made the grandkids come out and stand in the dark and cold with me to put them on the fence. So they felt quite triumphant at what they had done!

Robin

12 degrees below Freezing!!!!

6 Responses to “12 degrees below Freezing!!!!”

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