When I put away the Christmas lights last year, I was careful to do it in such a way that when I got them back out, it would be easy to unwind each individual strand and place them easily on the tree, this year.

I hadn’t counted on the fact that almost every strand has blown a fuse somewhere, and that some of them are only lighting up half the string, some are lit at each end but not in the middle, and some are blinking even though they contain no special magic blinker-bulb.

If anyone can figure out how to pry open the fuse thing on these lights, for heaven’s sake have mercy on me and get over here and do it for me. I’m trying, but I think the fuse thing is a fused thing. I know I’m on the right end because it says right on there, “Fuse Thing.” There are also some numbers on there but I never pay any attention to those.

There is no trap door for fuse-changing on either end of these lights.

Oh well. I’m stringing the lighted lights on the tree and dropping the duds down the middle. It will look odd in the daytime, but at night when the tree lights are glowing in the darkish room, nobody will see the dregs of lights. It will be perfect, as are all glowing Christmas trees at night.

People tell me that I should get a pre-lit tree, but those, lovely and handy as they are, do not have enough lights for me. Besides, my tree is twenty years old and has been promoted to the status of “heirloom” now. There are many people who think it’s a real tree.

It’s beautiful from the road, too.

Maybe this will be the year I clean out the guest room closet so people can hang their clothes in there. The closet in Zappa’s old room is full of dead computers and electronics, but those can be carried down to the garage. I wonder if I’ll really do it. The Christmas boxes have been living in there but since I’ve got them all out, it would be easy to put them back in the other closet. If I got the dead computers out of the other closet.

Boring, boring, boring.

Sowwy.

I’ve had my HP printer for about six years and it’s been good to me. I really liked it. Hub gave it to me for Mother’s Day and I am the kind of woman who digs gifts like that.

But this one time, at band camp as quizzes were being printed, the HP made a horrible sound, not unlike a human being retching and then vomiting, and the paper spewed out with a big rip down the center. So did the next paper. The third didn’t come out at all; it was so badly torn up that it stuck. Careful examination revealed. . . . heck, I don’t know nothing ’bout birthing no babies torn-up papers out of a sprung printer. I just figured the thing was legally dead.

Hub brought home a new one for me. I was ecstatic. I NEED my printer. Without it, I have to email my quizzes and tests and worksheets to my college account and print them off in the workroom, and it’s a pain because some loser joker keeps setting the printers to a machine way down the hall in a lab that’s full of students who know that quizzes and tests sometimes print out in that room so they’re watchful and tend to help themselves to things before the professor can run like a crazed and pursued animal and retrieve the papers.

I could save them to a cd, but not all the workroom computers accommodate a cd. I could save them to a disc, but the newer computers in there don’t have a disc drive. And when you go in there, you have to take pot luck with the computers.

My new printer is a Lexmark, and it’s a purty thing.

It was also packed by a troll who lives under a bridge. We Hub started to put it all together for me, and hook it up, etc, and as he was reading the instruction sheet he started to laugh. Here’s why. Can you believe this?

What the heck is up with that? How can they toy with me like that? Is Lexmark reducing my printer purchase to a riverboat gamble? It said on the outside of the box that everything necessary for installation was included. How can they NOT include the USB cable with a new printer?

Well, they didn’t.

Hub went to Radio Shack to buy one, and the store wanted $26.00 for it. He decided to check out Big Lots, and the same cable there was $5.00. The VERY. SAME. CABLE.

He brought it home and opened the package, as I have a hard time opening packages that have been sealed with transparent Black Box plastic capable of surviving the most horrible crashes and fires but which are necessary to protect valuable contents such as Matchbox cars and AA batteries and USB cables from shoplifters without invariably slicing pieces of myself off in my frantic attempts to open them. Then he had to leave to work a basketball game at the high school so here I am looking at my unhooked-up printer and thinking, “Somebody at Lexmark was on crack cocaine when they packed this box.” But I bet the printer works fine once we attach that Big Lots cable to it.

Lexmark might want to rethink that technical writer they hired, though.

The ink cartridges are half what the HP cartridges cost. I hope that means I got a bargain, and not that I’m going to get what I paid for.

I figure Lexmark owes me for a USB cable anyway. If anybody asks, those cables are $26 at Radio Shack. Plus tax, and plus gas for the comparison shopping.

P.S. Thanks for that suggestion, srp, but we tried using the HP’s cable and the little plug things were not compatible.

Chris, I don’t mind people disagreeing with me, even when I don’t appreciate the name-calling, but when you type in caps AND mock me, it’s as though you were yelling at me and I don’t appreciate that. That’s why you’re gone. Learn some manners and you can come back.

The cable not being there wasn’t really my issue. It was the way it was phrased. “A USB cable may or may not be included.” May or may not be included? Did some of the packages contain a cable? The luck of the draw gave me one that didn’t? And this after the outside of the box promised that everything necessary to connect and use the printer was included.

Oh, and Josh? Please come over any time, and bring anyone you want. You were one of my favorite students and now you’ve become one of my favorite friends. You rocked when you were a kid, and you rock even more now that you’re all grown up. (Grown up. Hahahahaha)

Sorry. We sweet old ladies tend to slap our thighs (think “jello in an earthquake”) and snort Geritol out of our noses when these pert young things refer to themselves as ‘grown up.’

But I love you, Josh. I did then and I do now.

Pizza time.