Oh the Conspiracies

We've lived in this apartment for 2 ½ years. For our third time here, I decided to toss some Christmas lights on the exterior. There is a long stairway leading up to our landing, and we found the cutest rope light (stripped like a candy cane) to wrap around it. Yay!

The rope was purchased on a Monday. That entire week I left for work at 6am and didn't get back until well after 5pm. Dark in the morning, dark in the evening . . . no time to put lights up. Boo.

Finally, after the hurricane drama and cleanup Saturday morning, I got to wrap the rope light around our railing. Yay!

It's cute. Super cute.

I managed to get the whole thing done with one strand. Almost. I ended up 2 feet short from the plug to the socket. Boo.

Really? Of course I expected this. So the next trip to the store included an outdoor extension cord. Yay!

Next day, after picking shingles up off the ground for two hours, I get out the extension cord, plug the rope light into the cord, go to insert it into the socket thing that I bought . . . only to find that the dumb extension cord has a ground wire (3 prongs) instead of the 2 that the socket plug has. Boo.

What?!? Grrr . . . This is not acceptable.

So tonight, at the store, I buy an extra set of 50 mini lights that we can toss on the porch and will easily reach from the end of the railing to the plug. Two prongs—check. Yay!

Oh yes, two prongs alright. Two prongs that are the SAME SIZE!!!!

ARRGGGGHHHHhhhhhh

The rope lights have a big side and a small side. Boo.

Seriously, what kind of sick conspiracies lie (lay?) in the depths of Christmas Decoration Company Headquarters???

If I ever meet any of them on the street, I will kick them in the shins and smack them in the back of the head. Then I will find a rodeo star to lasso them with my rope light and hog tie them—leaving them on the street to suffer the ridicule of little children and dogs. Yay!

So now the solution is to take what I have off, attach the other one to it and light the railing on fire with all of the illumination that will now come out of it. At least the abducting aliens will be able to find their way up the stairs and onto our landing.