outdoor lights

I'm an absolute sucker for those pretty white strings of outdoor lights. Peruse my tumblr for more than five minutes, and you'll find evidence of that. They speak to me and tell me, "we are what summer parties are all about." And I tend to agree with them.

For my birthday party last year, I bought a couple strings of them at Target and we strung them between the house and two trees close by. It looked so pretty, so light and summery and twinkly.

Or I guess I should have said it WOULD have looked so pretty IF it hadn't rained. Because it rained -no, poured- for most of the party. RJ threw up some tarps and we huddled, soggy and muddy, underneath the blue tarps slurping down clams. The tarps were clearly necessary, but they had the unfortunate side effect of totally ruining the effects of the string lights.

But this year! This year that will not be the case. I hope. Over lunch, RJ timidly asked me if I had checked the weather report for the weekend. Um, no....have you? Turns out we were both too afraid. Not only because then you wouldn't be able to fully enjoy the string lights (well, that's important too, but probably not to RJ). The problem really is that we have absolutely no grass, no landscaping, no real yard. What we currently have is a  toxic mix of dirt, sand, little rocks, big rocks, and some really huge rocks. See, one consequence of completely redoing your house, having three vehicles and 2, 856 boats and a couple of very active pets is that the yard sort of...disappears. Wonder why. Anyhow! rain = mud mud everywhere.

Now I'm not going to uncross any of my appendages, but...here's the tentative weekend forecast:

I'm already trying to figure out where to hang the white lights.