Birthing Beautiful Ideas

My husband has what I have come to consider an endless, ever-changing slew of obsessions. 

These obsessions are random fixations, ephemeral-yet-passionate hobbies that consume both time and money and that leave me feeling everything from hilarity to frustration to pride to exasperation.

For instance, once Tim became so obsessed with amassing a veritable army of Criterion Collection DVDs that he needed to store some of these excellent-yet-expensive films in his underwear drawer since there was no room left for them on the shelves in our living room.  And so I intervened and put a stop to the obsession.

A couple of years later, Tim’s obsessions found him deeply in love with buying “in bulk.”  It was awesome at first.  Until one day, I found myself saying, “Dude, I don’t know what wild shenanigans you have planned for that vat of clam juice, but I think it’s high time you found yourself another obsession.”  And don’t get me started on the other vestige of his buying-in-bulk obsession.  Because I can see three mega-size bottles containing nearly 1000 Omega-3 fish oil capsules from where I sit at this very moment.

And now that Tim’s latest obsession–marathon-training–is waning, I see his newest obsession looming on our horizon.

I see it in all of its bright and shiny garishness, waving at us like a mechanical Santa Claus perched on someone’s front lawn.

Outdoor Christmas decorations.

The lights.  The ornamental candy canes.  The garland and bows.  The (oh God, please no) inflatable snowmen.  The (please, for the love of all that is lovely about Christmas, no) illuminated reindeer that simply beg for bored teenagers to pose in lurid positions.  The (please…I’m begging PLEASE NO, God we’re talking about YOUR SON here) cartoonish nativity scenes that make the baby Jesus look  like Ziggy dressed in swaddling clothes.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some Christmas decorations.  And I love seeing those decorations through my children’s eyes even more.  I just don’t want all of those decorations in my front yard for the entire month of December each year.

And why am I worried that the front yard may soon be the site of Tim’s latest festive, silvery, sparkling obsession?

You see, this is the first year that we have ever put up Christmas lights outside.  In prior years, our holiday time apartment-living and newborn care-taking and general laziness always sapped any and all desire to decorate the exterior of our home.

But this year, with our first house and no newborns in sight and a surprising gust of wintry energy, we decided to string up the lights with the best of them.

At first, I wanted to go for something simple, so I took a single strand of colored lights and wrapped them around a bush.  TA DAAAAA!  Lights!  Outside!  WE’RE SO FREAKING FESTIVE!!!

Then Tim decided that he also wanted to hang up the three strands of white icicle lights that my parents had given to us.

“Sure,” I thought.  “If it doesn’t take any additional effort on my part, then I’m all for it.”

So I didn’t bat an eye when Tim took a trip to Lowes specifically to get tools to assist him with hanging up Christmas lights.  I didn’t even balk all that much when I looked out the front window to see him wielding a very unwieldy ten-foot pole that he was using to hang up the lights.  I was even giddy when Tim suggested that we celebrate our newly sparkly home by taking a drive around the city to look at Christmas lights.

But it wasn’t until the aforementioned trip around Columbus that Tim’s new obsession began to reveal itself to me.

“So, Kristen, are you getting any ideas for what we can do next year?”

“Huh?  Next year?”

“Yeah.  The Christmas lights next year.  See anything you’d like to try out next Christmas?”

“Um, I dunno.  Some garland around the front porch?  A bow or two?”

“Well,” he replied,” I was thinking…”

He began talking about these colors for these trees those colors for those trees and illuminated reindeer and white lights vs. colored lights and large bulbs vs. small bulbs and ways to make rooftop light-hanging more precise and it was very clear to me that he had been thinking about outdoor Christmas decorations all freakin’ afternoon and that he wasn’t about to stop thinking about them any time soon.

Suddenly, the car whipped to the left, and Tim literally sounded as if he was out of breath as he begged me to “BRING OUT THE CAMERA!  BRING IT OUT!  TAKE A PICTURE, KRISTEN!  OH MY GOD!  WOULD YOU LOOK AT IT?!”

There it was.  A yard so festooned with Christmas decorations that the yard itself was nearly invisible.  Lights.  An electronic countdown to Christmas.  A cartoonish nativity scene with a rotating spotlight shining on it.  Santa on his sleigh with Rudolph and the gang, illuminated candy canes, dancing Christmas trees, snowmen and elves and reindeer and ornaments and gift-wrapped packages and, I kid you not, a gigantic inflatable Homer Simpson dressed as Santa Claus.

“Honey,” I breathed.  “I swear to God, if there is an inflatable Homer Simpson Santa in our yard next year, you’re gonna rue the day you were born.”