George Patton was quoted once (maybe just in the 1970 movie) as saying, “I don’t like to pay for the sale real estate twice.”

That’s a reasonable credo in my view, and one I broke today.

Last week I made a point to string lights around the fence in the front yard and put out the lighted polar bears in advance of the Christmagiving festivities that begin tomorrow. Then today as I gathered and sorted more Christmas lights and decorations and prepared to set up and decorate our Christmas tree, I found three very long, very bright multi-color LED strings. I decided they would not be a good choice for the tree itself because the length of the strings made them unmanageable, but they would be perfect for the fence in the front yard.

So yes, I took down all the short strings and put up the long ones. It made sense, despite rebooting the whole effort. It reminded me of getting a third of the way through a short story and tearing up the pages and starting from a blank page.

By tonight I had the tree up and decorated, and the front window decorated. Abby got some presents wrapped. Chele called to assure us that yes, they are still coming.