TEN THOUSAND LIGHTS AND NOTHING BUT DARKNESS

Please come back tomorrow for my husband Milton's comments on Paula White's boobs.

###

Last night, we had a dinner party for 30 people--our staff and board (my husband is a pastor). It was an enjoyable time. There was lots of laughter and friendship flowing through the house.

It took lots of planning. Since it was a sit-down dinner, I had to provide seating at tables. The dining room table and kitchen table were already there, of course, and I used my small cherry drop-leaf table in the living room, and then I borrowed an 8-foot table from the church which I put in the family room. I worked all day making things pretty. The appointments on each table were different. For example, the dining room table and the cherry drop-leaf table had centerpieces with teal and purple Christmas balls and peacock ornaments--to match my Christmas tree--and the kitchen table was decked out in red and green with my Christmas dishes, tablecloth, embroidered napkins, and napkin rings. And the table in the family room could've been called The Gilded One. On the lanai (back porch), we set up tables for hors d'oeurve and punch; and desserts and coffee.

Milton worked, too, running errands such as buying the ice and gift certificates for our presents to the people, etc. One of his errands was going to the store to buy more lights for the outside.

See, we'd already decorated the outside. So why did we need more lights? I even asked him that. He said he wanted more. We already had: six lush green wreaths with oversized red bows in the six windows across the front of the house with spotlights shooting up at them; two more lush green wreaths with oversized red bows on each of the coach lanterns; small lighted snowmen lights along one shrub bed; white lights threaded through the shrubs in the other bed; white lights in the shrubs in the large oval bed directly in front of the house; a lighted snowman beside a sleigh full of poinsettias to the right of the front door, on the front porch. And of course the front door wreath with its singing snowman on the side of it.

But he was determined to have more lights.

Reminded me of Tim Allen and that Christmas movie we saw one year.

So Milton uses box after box of lights and runs them up the palm trees this time and down the fronds and through more shrubbery. It's an hour-and-a-half before the party starts, and he's outside working his head off. I go outside and remind him that he's pushing it close, since some people arrive early.

He comes in, showers and dresses, then does some last-minute stuff inside, like I'm doing. I finish lighting candles throughout the house and turning on the china cabinet lights and the wall unit lights and all my pretty lamps, and finally, things are done. We are ready. For our guests. After days and days of work, planning, running errands, etc., we're finally going to have them in our home.

So we sit down and chat a few minutes. Every time we hear a car, we think someone's here, only they're not. No earlybirds this time. At least not early earlybirds. It's now about five minutes till seven. The doorbell rings.

I throw open the door and welcome in my guests--lots of them, only to be greeted by darkness outside.

No lights in the shrubs. No spotlights on the lush green wreaths with the oversized red bows. No snowmen lights. No lights in the palm trees.

We've thrown a breaker!

All those lights did it! The extra lights!

And at the precise moment our guests arrived.

Sheesh!

It was all so pretty, and they didn't even get to see it.

If only he hadn't put out so many lights.

Reminded me of Tim Allen and that Christmas movie we saw one year.

:)

I'm so glad I can hang loose and not be bothered by what I perceive is a shortcoming of my husband's. In the early years, this might've prompted an argument. But not now. And I'm glad this is vice versa with us.