Bargain Hunting
Mary, my wife, significant other, promoter of good eating habits, the person I quit smoking for, and all around good egg, loves a bargain. Not just loves, cause when her blood is up and the moon is high she becomes almost feral in her pursuit of an extra 10% off a marked down duvet. Mortals, of which I am one, tremble in her presence, especially if we happen to be standing in between her and a clearance item.
One night just before Christmas, I mentioned, almost off hand and all too carelessly, that the Christmas lights might be in need of replacement, since they came from a time when people first marveled at the wonders of electricity. There were some rumors among the eldest of the family that these lights may have been passed down from the legendary hands of Edison himself, the Wizard of Menlo Park, and a man who always had an eye on the bottom line. Or maybe not. But they were old and at one point over the holidays I noticed that one or more strings were blinking on and off and this was a little disconcerting as they were not lights that were designed to blink.
Naturally revealing this to Mary cost me some sleep and a fair amount of physical labor in a manner in which I was not unfamiliar with. See Mary has a habit of wakening in the middle of the night convinced that disaster is about to engulf us all. For the past several months it was a recurring fear that assassins, burglars, thieves and/or ninjas were breaking into the house in the wee hours of the morn. Admirably, she rarely deigned to wake me to investigate, content instead to lay awake until she was convinced that the sounds which were remarkably similar to windows breaking and automatic weapons being primed, were actually the furnaces cooling or the house settling because we're sitting on a previously undiscovered ancient fault that will someday result in the continent of North America splitting in half and the eastern segment falling into the Atlantic Ocean.
In order to promote a good night's sleep for Mary and a more pleasant morning for yours truly I decided to subscribe to a home security service. With the addition of a few magnetic sensors, and a control panel that would not be out of place on a nuclear powered recreational vehicle, I managed to purchase as you were, some piece of mind for Mary who now sleeps deeply, secure in the knowledge that robotic samurai from the future are not breaking into the house to steal our boxed collection of the entire series of the Muppet Show, available in DVD but not Blu-Ray (yet).
Well, she was sleeping deeply until I mentioned, as previously described, off-handedly and carelessly, that the Christmas tree lights were showing their age. From that night onwards her deepest slumbers were interrupted with the deep seated and wholly understandable fear that the Christmas tree had burst into flame and the whole house was in the process of burning to the ground. This disregards the fact that the builder of our abode has placed a smoke detector in seemingly every room in the house, including the garage and the master bath. And no, there is no truth to that other rumor that I have at times set off the bathroom detector, it's just faulty. In any case, whenever Mary can't sleep because of irrational yet totally understandable fears, I suffer. Maybe not that night, but the next morning when a somewhat cranky and sleep deprived wife finds jobs that need doing and people who need seeing.
As soon as Christmas day had receded into the rear view mirror I had to take down and dispose of the piney foliage of death. For some reason, I suppose because the needles fall off a lot easier after a couple of weeks of forgetting to water it, taking a Christmas tree out of the house is a lot harder than bringing it in. After a few dozen scratches and enough pine sap on my clothes to allow me to take on the moniker of Human Fly Trap, I was able to wrestle the tree into a ravine behind the house that is still on our property so I wasn't illegally dumping. Unless there's some law about dumping dead trees on your own property which I will not entirely rule out so I'm not saying where exactly the dead and unlamented tree is located. I call it recycling back into nature, but Mary calls it avoiding dragging it all the way up to the street for the garbage men to collect.
Along with the tree disposal I also had to get rid of the Christmas tree lights. This resulted in a decision by Mary to take advantage of the post holiday sales and get some new lights. Along with, as it turned out, a couple of garlands, gift bags, and more wrapping paper. I'm not sure why we needed to get more wrapping paper as we already have a couple of square kilometers of the stuff. Mary is of the opinion that there can never be too much wrapping paper and it never goes bad (although I'm pretty sure the paper from the Seventies might be a little out of date, Mary thinks avocado green and silver is due to come back into fashion any time now). I harbor the hope that hoarding of wrapping paper signals that Mary intends to purchase a yacht someday and thinks she'll need all the wrapping paper to properly package it. Of course I also often stand accused of living in a fantasy world all of my own making.
All in all it turns out that the lights were the big ticket item on Mary's receipt. They cost a grand total of $1.19 per string. The wrapping paper and other miscellany all were on sale at 90% off. The lights on that basis were a case of throwing money down a manhole as they were only 75% off. Some times I wonder where Mary's head is, every quarter spent unnecessarily on overpriced Christmas tree lights is another quarter that cannot be applied to the "Get Mike A Yacht Fund".
