Most of you either know my husband or know of my husband. But even his closest friends and family are completely unaware of his dark secret. My husband has a disability. A mental one. It's called OGS, or Obsessive Griswold Syndrome.
While most wives would view this as a very expensive and time consuming handicap, I embrace it. To me (the creative, big project lover), his OGS is a gift wrapped in multicolored LEDs topped with fresh noble fir garland. I'm, of course, referencing the *Award Winning* Gingerbread House of 2010 and the blazing white spectacle that was the 5,000 sq ft my-neighbor-is-deployed-so-I'll-make-his-kids-happy-by-putting-lights-on-their-side-of-our-duplex-too Christmas display in North Carolina, affectionately nick-named the Icicle House. He was over the moon after that one because, for the first time since joining the military, our exterior lighting was perfectly balanced : )
He is so particular about his exterior lighting and decorating, that he has developed a point system which he uses to evaluate not only our home, but everyone else as well. I'm not sure how many points everyone starts with, but points are deducted for each day your lights are up and ON before Thanksgiving, sagging lights, blinking sections combined with fading/running/non-blinking sections, rope lights, blow ups (that's a lazy man's Christmas decor), using only one color (white is the exception) . . . the list goes on and on and, frankly, I don't even know it all and am pretty sure he makes up more deductions as we go. I'm sure there are bonus points, but no one's earned them yet to my knowledge.
This year is no different, except that he's been presented with obstacles we've never encountered before. First, we skipped decorating the weekend following Thanksgiving because my parents were in town. Big mistake. Apparently, the snow can't stay at bay long after Thanksgiving in Colorado. We had every intention of creating his Christmas masterpiece this weekend. That is, until we checked the weather forecast yesterday. Snow . . . all weekend . . . and lots of it.
The ground work can be done rain or shine and so can the icicles since we invested in a ladder yesterday, but the trim lights require climbing onto the roof and that can NOT be done on a wet, snowy, steep pitched second story. So last night my husband, completely overwhelmed by his OGS, mounted the ladder and ascended to the roof where he completed the trim lights in the freezing cold pitch blackness of night. And I, the ever faithful and always concerned wife, stayed outside with him (on the ground), tossing bags of gutter clips and extra strands of lights up on the roof for him.
By the time we reached the back side of the house, we had worked through all the spools of lights we had purchased this year. He was so careful, even spent a little extra per spool, to buy Phillips lights only, since that was the brand we purchased last year and they MUST match exactly. It was only after I retrieved the bin of lights leftover from last year's gingerbread creation from the garage and tossed a strand up onto the roof that he realized Philips had betrayed us. Some disgraceful schlub at Philips headquarters whose sole job is to come up with ways to make even more money off men who suffer from the same mental disorder as my husband, realized that if they added an extra colored bulp . . . purple . . . to the pattern of colored lights, men with OGS will be forced to trash last year's strands and replace them all with the new purple strands or be left to suffer with mismatched strands. So my husband had a decision to make: Use last year's strands on the least visible side of the house and deduct points, or descend from the roof and haul off to Target and risk being gone long enough for the storm to blow in. The stress was almost too much to bear. But finally, he came to the conclusion that missing an entire section of lights (all be it the far back corner) due to snow was utterly unacceptable. He hung last year's strands and took his deductions like a man.
Though, I have a strong feeling I'll be heading to Target this weekend just in case the Philips punks decide to add periwinkle or chartreuse next year.
At this point, my husband's poor fingers were near frost bite stage. I commented, JOKINGLY, that he didn't have to put a clip on each individual bulb and save his fingers by only putting a clip on every fifth bulb. Would go so much faster! What follows is his rebuttle:
"Not acceptable. I refuse to have flaccid lights. Each bulb must stand erect. Christmas lights on Viagra!"
I do love him . . . . so much : )
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| Hanging our "gingerbread" last year |
Pics of this years lights will be posted after the snow stops falling this weekend.
And here they are! I love having a husband that can take any crazy idea I have for a Christmas theme and make it reality. I mentioned possibly doing the Calvin and Hobbs snowmen next year . . . .
. . . he's already researching do-it-yourself snow making machines.
Good grief :-p
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