Under the Wire

Oh, yeah, happy (kinda late) New Year, too

 

January 27, 2021



OK, so what do you do when you can’t write about anything you think is funny because it might offend someone? It’s particularly hard to do if your goal is to entertain, not offend anyone.

I must admit I haven’t been particularly fond of 2020. Oh, we had a great calf crop, just barely enough moisture to keep us in grass until fall and hit a pretty good market with our calves. That part of this past year was pretty good. The trouble is, those 46 words you just read is about all the good things I can say about the past 365 days. That’s one single good word every eight days. Not even one a week! Every eight days. That’s less than four a month. For a guy who only wants to write positive, light hearted, maybe even funny stuff, this is a major idea drought!

Hundreds of other writers have actually had a field day with these stats. These folks only want to write about the bad stuff. The nastier, more hurtful the better. They take joy in writing 46 bad things into every sentence, written every day. What a windfall of subject matter for them.

I personally have no interest in making anyone even a little bit upset, let alone flat out mad. To tell the truth, I don’t get paid enough for writing these stories to put up with death threats or mobs showing up at my door.

I just want to find and write about the funny things that are still happening to you and me.

Sue wanted me to write about me putting up Christmas lights. I didn’t think that was particularly funny but she did chuckle when mentioning a couple of incidents.

Years ago I outgrew climbing a ladder to hang strings of lights on our house gutters. Made my hip hurt. Instead, little colored flood lights encircle our house, supported by small plastic stakes driven into the frozen December ground. OK, so encircled is not an accurate description. They go about three-quarters of the way around the house. Had to crawl along the ground and bore little holes in the frozen tundra with my electric drill to insert the easily broken plastic pegs. Had to quit because my back and knees began to hurt. Hips were OK, though. Then another issue developed. There are not enough outside electrical outlets around our house to be available where I needed one. Thus lots, and I do mean lots, of extension cords are necessary. I may have a larger inventory of various types of extension cords than Walmart. Extension cords run everywhere, trying to find an electrical source for my little lights. Eventually every single one was hooked up to our local REA, for which I am sure they are grateful.

The problem now is, where are all the switches and breakers that control these outlets? I finally just turned on every breaker in the electrical panel in the garage. All the lights lit up.

We like to disconnect from our rural electrical association friends before we go to bed. Have to because several of the lights shine in our bedroom window and keep us awake. That means I need to shut off all the breakers and switches that power the lights. Have no idea which one they are. Ten o’clock at night, in my pajamas in the cold garage, I’m not too picky. I just shut off switches, unplug some cords led out under the garage door. Any suspect electric source is off when I go to bed. The next morning when I begin my wake up routine, the coffee pot won’t make coffee. The refrigerator looks like it was off all night and for some reason our furnace has let the house get down to 53 degrees. However, half of our Christmas lights have burned all night.

Now, I don’t know why Sue thought this would make a funny story. I’m still trying to figure out how to get those darn Christmas lights to go off when I go to bed.

I tell you, I’m still looking for something funny to write about. Maybe, just maybe, I’ll find something. Oh, yeah, by the way, hope you had a Merry Christmas and I hope 2021 brings something funny to write about! Happy New Year, too!

And, there’s more. Sue once again came up with a suggestion. Write something else because I wrote this too late for New Years. Truth is, I’m still fighting those blankety-blank Christmas lights.

Happy kinda late New Year.

 

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