Outdoor Christmas decorations have always confounded me. Every year, I nudge my husband and point wistfully to all the icicles and glowing bulbs on our neighbors' houses, and he just shrugs, not the least bit interested in the ladders and tedium implied.
A few years ago, I decided to take matters into my own hands. On walks, I stared, trying to figure out how people actually rigged them. I can comprehend the process if you have a nice handy outdoor outlet on the front of your house. But failing that, you either leave a window cracked and risk home invasion and pneumonia, Or you string the cord through your mailbox, as I once did, feeling like Wallace and Gromit as the dog watched in bemusement.
Then we moved, and I couldn't even string my Target topiary trees through the mailbox. So this year I resolved to hire an electrician, pay him the cost of universal health care, and insist he drill right through three layers of brick and concrete. I wanted a festive house, dammit!
I was about to call when I saw the walkway trees. Brookstone has swags, wreaths and walkway trees in its catalog, and they are battery operated! Brilliant on so many levels...
Of course, they only come in warm white or multicolored, and as my husband and I have a lifelong war going over white or multi, I had hoped for a compromise. Amber! Amber would be perfect. It would look golden, it would match the trim on the house... I could use the forlorn topiary trees and restring them...
Excited, I started searching the Internet for amber + outdoor + LED + battery operated + Christmas (retailers are not p.c.). I searched compulsively, using various recombinations and fragments of these search terms, for four nights in a row. I emailed sellers. I wrote Brookstone. No dice.
Every string of battery-operated LED lights that comes in amber or gold is rated "Indoor."
And every string of "Outdoor" battery-operated lights is either white or multicolored.
Either I'm doomed to continue the marital wars, or I blow the house up by putting indoor lights outdoors.
"The hell with it," I told Andrew. "I'm buying an inflatable Santa."
He grinned. "I think you have to plug them in."
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
