Not in the christmas spirit

This year, despite doing nice things for strangers, I'm not in the Christmas spirit at all.

I look at all my decorations and think, "crap, I'm just going to have to take this down in a month."

I think a part of it stems from there are no Christmas lights up and down my street this year. And why is there none? Because my next door neighbor has not put up his lights.

There is a long standing, friendly feud with my next door neighbor. He LOVES his front yard and works very hard to make it nice. His first Christmas in his house, his whole front yard was lit up. He had at least 10 different types of decorations. It looked awesome.

My house had one string of rope light around the window, and you could see the rope light connect to the extention cord. It looked pitiful.

My Neighbor ended up shining one of those spotlights with the happy holiday's messages on the side of our house to make out house look all lame.

The next year we stepped it up. We bought a light up polar bear.

They bought a light up train.

The year after that we bought a light up seal, and we up it up next to the polar bear.

They bought these beauiful light up thingys I"ve never seen anywhere else but on his lawn.

Last year we put up the light up wreath (You know what happened to that) the polar bear and the seal. Over the year of storage though, the seal's head broke and didn't light up. So in teh day time it looked fine. But at night, it looked like the polar bear decapited it. Not really the festive mood I was hoping for.

Also last year my neighbor came up to me and said, "I'm going out of town for two weeks, do you mind turning on my lights every day so no one robs my house."
"Sure no problem."

His dectorations look amazing, with a snowman, train, and those pretty colorful light up thingys.

Last year we have two wind storms. The snowman's head fell off. One of the light up thingies vanished. As it turns out they were made out of paper, saran wrap and a see through plastic. They were VERY fragile. <-- this becomes important later.

I went out and fix the snow man, (but he looked worst then my seal) I search for the light up thingy. IT was cold, and windy and I was outside for like ten minutes looking for it. The whole time thinking, "He's going to think I destroyed it on purpose."

Once it was back to a sort of normal state, two days later another WIND STORM hit.

The snowman died.

The light up thingy was under the car.

When I went to pick it up, it started to fall apart in my hands. Like someone trying to hid a dead body, I gathered the pieces and rushed to my basement. There it laid.

My neighbor came home early. "I'm sorry, there was these wind storms." The winter wonderland he created looked like an abnormally large radioactive lizard attacked it.

He smiled, "that's OK."
"I've got your light up thingy in my basement. It doesn't look good." I hung my head in shame.

I went down to get it and it split in half. Wire and plastic started to rain off of it as I carried it up the stairs. I couldn't make eye contact with him as I handed it to him.

Today is December 10, neither of us have our decorations up.

I think we're both in mourning this year.

His yard will not longer look like a magically wonderland for his children.
My yard won't look like a nature documentary gone horribly wrong.

Maybe's it for the best. I don't think an apex predator like the polar bear would have gotten along with the reindeer I wanted to buy.