I hope all your holidays have been filled with momentary -- and lasting -- joys.

As I mentioned a while back, I tend to procrastinate.

So it came to pass that on Christmas Eve, as the sun sank and darkness crept in, I was on our front porch stringing Christmas lights.

To my credit, I had hung the greens and bows many days earlier, so the house looked decked, but only in the daytime. I kept waiting for a semi-balmy day to finish the job, but this December proved a bit stingy with balmy days.

Thanks to detailed instructions my husband engineered a few years ago, stringing the Christmas lights is a pretty straightforward job: Plug in two extensions cords on the left, one on the right. Connect three sets of lights, flip the switch and you're done. 

In theory.

This time around I followed the instructions, plugged everything in and saw … darkness, no rainbow of lights.

I tromped over to the outdoor outlet and checked those button things (known to enlightened others as a ground fault circuit interruptor). 

I pushed the buttons. Several times. 

No lights.

I went back into the house and checked that the outdoor switch was on. It was.

Sigh. I stood perplexed in the dark, and tried to think what the problem could be. Unfortunately there were just too many possibilities: the lights themselves, a plug, an outlet, an extension cord, the switch? My meager electrical knowledge database was … overloaded.

I almost called my husband out to help, but a bit of pride stopped me, along with a little voice that said, "Come on, Cathy. You can do this."

I tromped down the steps once more and tried a last, voodoo-esque move: I unplugged both extension cords and replugged them -- but in the opposite outlet.

Bink! We had Christmas lights! 

I felt downright merry.

Playing with long exposures is fun!
(Our daughter gave me the idea.)