I Caved

 I know, I said I wasn't going to.  But I caved.

We moved here where we live now in 2013.  Our previous landlord was somewhat embarrassed over a bit of a whoopsie on their side - we had been a bit behind on our rent, got it all caught up, and they went to court anyway.  Turns out the catching up we did was adequate, in time, and all done properly.  Unfortunately, the young lady (I use that term in a descriptive, and not insulting, sense) failed to notify her supervisors that we had fulfilled our portion of what was required well in advance of the deadline.  As she was not communicating, the court took a dim view upon us.  Until they were informed by us and by the landlord that we had fulfilled our obligations, then the court said "Oh, OK, no, that's a doesn't-count" and said nothing else.  

Until 11 months later when they said "ah, you know what, we're embarrassed, so you get no new lease."  Oh, OK.  Thanks on that.  They still insist we owe them, but no, we don't.  They owe me quite a bit, including the costs I incurred in putting down one of my dogs, Lily, who was a pretty persistent grass eater, yet we were not informed that they were spraying their grass with known cancer-causing agents.  And we weren't the only folks with dogs in their complex.  

But it's all over now.  And we're in a new place.  And the first Christmas we were here, we used some of the left over decorations from our house on this place to make it pretty.  One of my all-time favorite images is a hedge or any sort of surface, covered in snow, with colored lights beneath the snow.  We'd used a couple of "net lights" to cover one of the hedges in front of our unit at the old place, and this new place has a rather large ... well, one of those fast-growing pine-type trees that blurts out a whole heck of a lot of growth, and if kept in check, can be wonderful.  If it's allowed to free-range and grow as it wishes, it kind of turns into a ... well, it's the 1200 pound gorilla on the corner of this unit.  It blocks a lot of direct sunlight from coming in our front window as our front window is east facing, but the tree is south of the window.  Granted, it's useless during the high summer, because the sun sets far enough north that we get direct light in the window.  But about 80% of the year, it's enough.

And we - that is, Jack and I - rigged a few strings of lights along our gutters and roof edges, and they ran right to the pine shrub.  But three and a half years ago when the goon squad came out to do the incredibly cheap siding on this unit, we removed all of it.  Now the siding here is mostly the cheap vinyl, thin, and the thin metal fascia they put up hides a world of rot on the pre-existing facia - not the way I'd do the job, I guarantee you.  If I was going to repair some place I owned, I would spend the money to get proper treated lumber, allow it the time to insure it was fully dried - that is, that the weatherproofing had fully taken effect in the wood - and then I'd prime and paint it properly, as well as installing it with stainless steel screws to insure they held what they were supposed to.

But anyway, my son and his fiance purchased a set of light up candy canes and a set of large light up bulbs to put in the yard.  My wife insisted on putting a blooming plant on the rear arm of the mailbox post (If you look at our mailbox post from the side, it is very much like a very large "+" sign - think about seven feet tall and six feet wide).  When winter arrived, we removed the bowl the plant had been placed in (it was in it's own pot, so it was rather easy), and I picked up some inexpensive decorations to mount on the back of that arm.  

Because the decorations were ... rather underwhelming after dark, my wife kept insisting we find some solar lights or some other method to create a little more excitement.  I didn't want to do that.  I wanted to just light what was there, because we do not get enough sunlight during the winter months to generate enough electricity.  So I did cave in and pick up one commercial landscape light and a splitter for the extension cord so we could SAFELY plug in the lights.  And that's been done now.  No permanent damage or anything connected to the unit, just a cable running out front.  Done.