LIghts

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

The potd today is of deck lights. It is not a good picture, because it is hard to take a good picture of lights without making a real effort. I just clicked. The point of the picture is not actually our lights; it is the lights of our backyard neighbors, down the hill. Do you see that dim little string of yellowish dots in the middle of the picture? Those are the neighbors’ lights.

We have had our lights for quite a while – maybe 5 years, maybe longer. Longer than pandemic, for sure. We have never (never) turned them off. I change the colors for holidays or when I feel like it. I had them yellow and blue for Ukraine for over a year – sure that the war would be over. I actually changed them from blue and yellow because I thought I might be jinxing them. Every once in a while, I get really superstitious. Obviously, it didn’t help. Usually they are blinky multi-color because that is like a party all by itself.

The down-the-hill backyard neighbors got their lights late in the summer that we got ours. I thought we were inspirational. The thing is I have seen their lights on NOT white three times. I know they are like ours and can change colors, because I have seen them the three times. The rest of the time they have them on white (we can do white. We don’t. Why would we buy colored lights to have them on white?), but the rest of the time is almost never. They have them on about 6-8 times per year. What is that about? They are LED. They don’t get hot. They don’t eat up tons of electricity. They are joyful! Turn ’em on!

So it makes me wonder. Why are they on tonight? Why are they on a dim white on a random day in March? It’s almost 10:30, so I can’t walk around the block and knock on the door to ask. I guess I probably wouldn’t do that anyway, but I like imagining that I would. I guess it will remain a mystery….