The fifth tree, saving lights, preparations, stump removal

While I was working from home yesterday, I took time to help Mama get our fifth tree – the real Christmas tree – set up and strung with lights. To be accurate, we got together and put lights on the tree which I had set up the day before. We had to swap places for two trees so that I was not cramped in a forest of fake trees where my recliner sits in the living room. That one placement swap leaves me less crowded in my corner, but I still have to share my corner with two trees. One artificial. One real. For lighting the real Christmas tree, we mostly used lights that I bought at Lowe’s on Saturday. I had headed to church to go bus calling Saturday morning, but I started feeling too badly to go with the group, so I went to Lowe’s for a few items before I headed home. I bought four boxes of cheap lights for the tree along with the stove pipe I needed for the shop heater I was working to complete. I had been hoping that four boxes would be enough. I wish I had a picture of the tree. Mama finished decorating it pretty quickly and it looks really good.

We used three boxes of the four boxes of lights I bought along with two strands of lights we kept from last year. We also threw away four strings of lights that had been saved to be reused but we found that the old ones only partially worked when we tested them this year. I told Mama we need to either plan on buying new lights each year or stocking up on lights after Christmas each year. Saving lights for reuse from year to year has not proved a benefit to us. It is always disappointing to get out a string of lights, plug them in and only about half of them illuminate. Sometimes it is the half nearest the plug. Sometimes it is the far end that is dead. Either way, it is disappointing. Mama knows nothing frustrates me more than when things do not work as they are supposed to. So, from my point of view, new lights each year is a affordable solution to ensure that we have working sets of lights to decorate with.

The practice session I attended today went well. My coworker was very pleased with the two videos I felt comfortable sharing with him to use in his upcoming class. He is nervous about presenting the class, but he will do fine. I feel comfortable with his knowledge base and his preparation. It is also a benefit for him that the class is more or less an internal class. Those he will be presenting to are part of a company that is a subsidiary of our company. That gives us broad latitude to present the class in a more informal format. We still have to get through the information, but we can do so in a relaxed manner. It will be a great opportunity for this new instructor to test his approach to the class presentation, the information he is responsible for, and the timing required to fill the allotted schedule of the class. I will be there to help, but I do not foresee getting too involved.

This evening, I will get to see how well I was able to burn out two stumps beside driveway. I have had great success in burning out two stumps along the other side of the driveway, but these additional two stumps had been left alone. They sit only a foot or two from the edge of the concrete and since that is where Victoria usually parks her car, I have left them alone. Yesterday I decided to see how far I could get if I started the fires over the stumps during my lunch hour. I ringed the stumps with fireproof barriers to limit how much grass was burned along with the stumps and got the fires going easily. I kept the fires going all day and well into the evening.

I burned a lot of old firewood as I did so. Getting all the rotting pieces of wood off the ground allows me to safely mow in areas I have avoided because of the obstacles the firewood caused. Even with the four times I have repeated this process, I still have a large reserve of old firewood to get rid of.  I finally abandoned oversight of the fires about 9:30 pm. Allowing them to burn out completely through the night. I did get up once about 2:30 am and looked out on the fires to make sure everything was okay. It was.

I was not up that early because I was worried about the fires. I was up because the big toe on my left foot was hurting so badly that it woke me from a deep sleep. I spent about an hour trying to deal with the pain and get back to sleep. Some pain cream rubbed gently on the toe and a couple Extra Strength Tylenol eventually dulled the pain and allowed me to sleep until about 5:30. It was a short night.

Hopefully tonight will be better.