The ladies at lunch are dishing about — what else? — husbands.
Because it’s the holiday season, our conversation turns to men and Christmas lights, which is as charged a conversation as people can have and not get arrested. (I’ve told my daughters, you can learn all you need to know about a man by the way he handles Christmas lights.)
The ladies’ complaints fall into three categories: husbands who won’t put up outdoor lights; husbands who put them up but badly; and husbands who go completely over the top and turn the house into something like the Griswolds’ house in the movie “Christmas Vacation.”
Which just further proves, there is no pleasing women.
I’m in the first group. I could put 20 bikini-clad cheerleaders on the roof, and my husband, Dan, would still rather watch football than scale the eaves to make the season bright. “I oppose any life-risking behavior on principle,” he says.
In the second camp are women whose husbands do a lousy job with the lights. “You can always tell a house that has lights done professionally,” one lady laments. “They’re straight — unlike ours.”
But the Dim Bulb Award went to Jo Ann’s husband. He was on a mission to get red and green Christmas lights, she told us. When he couldn’t find them at the store, a light bulb went off in his head. He took white outdoor lights, removed them from their sockets, spray-painted half of them red and the other half green.
“Hey, what’s with these lights?” Jo Ann’s son asked that evening. She looked outside and saw red and green specks dripping from the eaves — the paint melting off the bulbs.
In the third group are the overachieving husbands. One woman’s husband went so light crazy that she kept having to go to her neighbor’s house to blow-dry her hair because firing up the blow-dryer while the outdoor lights were on meant overloading the circuit.
None of this surprises Eric Rountree, owner of Colorado Lightscapes in Englewood. This year he got a call from a woman tired of watching her husband hang lights on the outdoor trees by tying a string of Christmas lights to a tennis ball and lobbing it over the trees.
I didn’t even ask Dan to hang outdoor lights after this year’s indoor-light fiasco. First, he patiently untangled the strands. Then, he plugged each one in. Though all the lights worked a year ago, now only two of the 10 strands lit completely. Most blacked out halfway. He huffed off to buy more. He returned in a funereal mood, and started putting the new lights on. He was two strands short.
When he returned from the store again, two of the strands on the tree were already out.
I called Rountree. He and his helpers had the outdoor lights up, straight, and working in less than two hours with no audible profanity.
Marni Jameson is a nationally syndicated columnist who lives in the Denver area. You may contact her through marni .
Advice from a professional
So the sparks won’t fly at your house, Eric Rountree of Colorado Lightscapes offers these DIY outdoor holiday lighting tips.
Decide what to light. Start by lighting a focal point in the yard, such as a tree or two, then outline the front doorway. For a little more bling, light the lower roofline, too. For the next upgrade, light the top roofline, and maybe add a lighted wreath. Don’t overdo it: If you’re in bed at night, and it looks like noon outside, you’ve gone too far.
Read the box. It will say how many strands you can piggyback before grounding to an outlet (usually three). It will also tell you how many watts are in each string of lights. “The biggest mistake people make is not understanding how watts work with the amperage of a circuit.” (Guilty!) If you vacuum while the lights are on and blow a fuse, you’ve overloaded the circuit.
Know your watts and amps. Find out how many watts are in one strand of lights. If you’ve tossed the box, figure one watt per bulb. If one string uses 100 watts, and you use six strands to light a tree, that’s 600 watts. To find the amperage divide 600 by 125 (I have no idea why), in this case roughly 5 amps. Most outdoor circuits can handle 15 amps, so you have 10 left. Once you’re close to the max, find another outdoor plug in a different zone of your house.
Use an all-weather outdoor timer to turn lights on automatically at dusk, and off at bedtime.
To revive half a strand of dead lights, go to where the darkness starts. Then work your way backward, jiggling each dark light until you find one that flickers. That’s the problem light. Replace it with one of the extra bulbs that come in the pack. (So that’s what they’re for!) The other lights should fire up. For lights that will last, invest in the new LED lights. They cost more, but give better illumination, use a lot less electricity, and last longer.
Be reasonable. “People get very serious about their lights,” says Rountree. “They feel a lot of pressure based on what’s going on in their neighborhood. I want to say, ‘Hey, so what if you go a year without lights. They’re just lights.”
