Light 'Em Up

Christmas and the holidays were always special to me growing up. As I aged, not so much, but when you have a child, making that magic happen is rewarding. I’m no Clark “Sparky” Griswold (how about that Randy Quaid, huh?), but I have found that I like multi-color lights along the roofline, as well as vintage blow molds. Sorry, but your air-blown Olaf from Frozen that you leave deflated during the day looks like dirty laundry in your yard and is lame. 

In 2014, I went to the hardware store for an after Christmas sale and purchased 13 strands of the classic C7 lights, not the safe LED-style that probably last forever, but the classic glass bulbs that burn your fingers and need to be replaced about once a year. I put them up on our two-story home for the first time in 2015 and quickly learned that you can’t combine more than four strands at a time, otherwise the fuse in the cord blows. And you have no idea which fuse it is, so you have to move the extension ladder to each connection and check the tiny fuse box and it always is the last strand you check without fail.

Then just days after I removed those lights after New Year’s 2016, I was in that near-fatal accident and developed CRPS and my decorating skills for the holidays became limited. Yes, we purchased one of those star shower laser light shows due to my inability to do anything more than insert a plug into an outlet and jam a stake in the ground (as long as the ground wasn't frozen yet). This is mostly because I couldn’t tolerate the pain of standing on a ladder rung, specifically, the arch of my foot. It’s much like stepping on a nail. (Yeah, I’ve done that too.) However, now it feels like an electrically charged nail. It is excruciating and it makes you want to puke. Don’t even get me started on making fists with your toes.

But now I have the DRG stimulator and the pain has been reduced and I wanted to give it another shot. (Last year, our home in Ottawa didn’t have many outdoor outlets and we were figuring out how to pay that $5k rabies vaccine bill, so we never called an electrician to get more outlets. Then we moved to our current ranch home in August and I felt it was time to try decorating the exterior of our home again.)

I got started on Saturday afternoon as my wife and our kid trimmed the newly culled balsam fir we procured the day before at a tree farm in Somonauk. The first climb up the new Little Giant ladder was the most difficult. I still felt discomfort, but it wasn’t vomit inducing. My confidence grew as I became distracted from the pain as I planned every next step. When your mobility is limited and every physical move hurts, you try your best not to waste those movements, like the saying ‘measure twice, cut once.’ The biggest hurdle, after the pain, that needs to be accounted for with having CRPS is weather because it directly affects the pain levels and I couldn’t have asked for a better forecast on Saturday where the high was near 50. I did struggle with my foot drop on the roof’s slope and had to slowly shuffle, but that’s better than a face dive onto the ground from the top of a one-story house. 

I finished the day worn-out physically, but mentally, I was satisfied. I retrieved my wife and daughter to take a look at my progress knowing full well I had more to do Sunday, but I knew they wanted to have a peek. They came outside and I expected the obligatory “good job,” which I got, but they meant it, especially the kid. She lit up. Her enthusiasm and smile melted my heart and I got a little teary-eyed. She then gave me a hug that I wouldn’t trade for anything. Like the season, it was magic.