Rose is Rose by Don Wimmer and Pat Brady for December 15, 2015

i built this house in 1986, and put up lights once. left them up four years. never again

My dad never went nuts in decorating the outside of the house. Just one string of lights across the front, and a big, lit-up Santa on the front porch.

One year, for reasons known only to him, he decided to put Santa on the roof. My brother & I were watching TV when we saw, to our horror, Dad fall past the living room window!

He came in, holding his wrist (I will NOT describe; it wasn’t pretty). My mother started to get ready to drive him to the hospital. There was red all over the collar of his coat, and my mother was a bit freaked out. I looked at my dad, and suddenly started laughing! My little brother noticed what I did, and started laughing as well. My dad caught on…and joined us in the laughter.

My mother was about to kill us.

She asked why we were laughing. I asked her, “Mom, what did you do right before Dad went outside?”

She said, “I touched up the Santa.”

I asked, “What did you use?”

She answered, “Lipstick”. At that moment, she got it, too. My dad had lipstick on his collar! For some reason, the 3 of us found that hilarious.

I’m using 2 of those Star Showers, much simpler, takes about 5 -10 minutes.

Cats go for anything that looks like a string.

I’ve had my outside decorations up for a few weeks now. Who goes to all that trouble for just a few days?

This will be very illuminating!

look for my house. It’ll have a sign reading “Bah, Humbug”