Auntie Lucylle Light

Yesterday when I got home from work, I decided I just couldn't keep the holidays at bay any longer, so I hauled out the Auntie Lucylle light.

The Auntie Lucylle Light is an object d'art that my great aunt Lucylle manufactured, as far as I can tell, with a string of multi-colored Christmas lights, a soldering gun and about a hundred or so medication cups, which she no doubt appropriated from the retirement home where she used to work in Ronhert Park.

What I love about the Auntie Lucylle Light, I mean besides its obvious historic significance and conversational value, is you can hang it from the ceiling. I mean, I don't have to clear off a spot for it.

Most of our Christmas stuff, that's the toughest part is finding a place to put it. Like this Mikasa Santa sculpture somebody gave us last year. It's obviously designed to go on the mantle over the fireplace. Just like our festive nutcracker, our three or four musical snow globes, the Nativity scene, the snowman and the stuffed penguin.

And what am I supposed to do with all the stuff that's already on the mantle? The family pictures, the cupie doll, the cat toys? I've got my Hansel and Gretel statue from Thriftown up there that's very delicate. What am I supposed to do with that? Leave it on the back of the toilet til Feast of the Epiphany?

And there's three more boxes of this crap in the garage. Maybe this year I'll take a page from Auntie Lucylle's playbook and just hang everything from the ceiling. Where's that soldering gun?

Kurt "big daddy" True
3 december 2004