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Mary wraps herself up in lights as a Christmas present for Paul
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Mary read the text on her smart phone. "Boarding, see you around ten." Paul would be home for Christmas. She normally didn't mind the amount of travel he did with his job, but the just-before-Christmas annual company planning meeting had always irked her. Paul was always gone for the three days before Christmas. He had explained to her, "It's got to be done right at the end of the year, so it is either just before or just after Christmas. We will still have Christmas eve and Christmas day together"
Christmas was a very special holiday for Mary. Her maiden name, which she kept when she married Paul, was Yule. Evidently, somewhere way back, one of her ancestors was responsible for building the Yule fire and for feeding the Yule Log slowly into the fire during the Winter Solstice celebrations that pre-dated Christianity in much of norther Europe. With a name like Mary Yule, it was natural that people would call her Mary Christmas. And with a nickname like Mary Christmas, it was natural that she would either hate Christmas or it would be her favorite holiday. Mary loved Christmas.
Mary and Paul had even been married on Christmas day. It had been almost impossible to find a minister or justice of the peace who would marry them on that day. Finally, in desperation, Mary had Googled "Pastor Kringle" and found a pastor by that name only a couple hours drive from where they lived. Because of his name, he understood and agreed to officiate. His first name was Christopher, spelled with a "K," so on Christmas Day, five years ago, Mary Christmas was joined to Paul Davis in holy matrimony by none other than Pastor Kris Kringle, himself.
This was their five year anniversary, and Mary wanted this to be the most special Christmas ever. She had a very special gift in mind for Paul. When he got home, he would find HER wrapped beneath the tree. Well, not exactly beneath the tree. She would be more like a separate tree standing - or more accurately, hanging - in the middle of the living room.
She had been preparing this for months. It actually started last Christmas when she saw a picture on line. She was looking for decorating ideas by searching for pictures of unusual Christmas lights. One of the pictures which popped up was of a woman in bondage who was wrapped completely in hundreds, if not thousands, of Christmas lights. The woman's legs were in a spreader bar and her feet were barely touching the ground. Her hands were held high and taut above her head by ropes which hung from a stout hook that had been screwed into a ceiling rafter. As soon as Mary had seen that image, she knew what she was going to get Paul for their fifth anniversary. But it was going to take a lot of planning.
The house was a western design with lots of wood everywhere. She bought a heavy, wagon-wheel style chandelier which looked very good in the living room, but required a very strong anchor to hang from the ceiling. Paul didn't quite understand why she was so worked up when he installed it.
"You really like this, don't you?" he said as he looked at her standing flushed and almost panting watching him use a hammer as a lever to screw the massive black hook into the ceiling. As soon as he was finished, she took him into the bedroom and made mad, passionate love to him. "Wow," he said afterwards. "I need to put up new lighting more often."
Mary just smiled at him and thought, "Wait until you see the lights next Christmas."
Over the summer, while Paul was gone on long trips, Mary planned and practiced. The hook was exactly what she needed, but the wagon wheel was very heavy and she couldn't take it down by herself. Then she remembered visiting her grandfather's farm as a child. He had an old-fashioned barn with the big hay mow door on one end. Above that door was a thick beam, and from that beam hung a rope with a block and tackle. Until aunt Louise caught them, she and her cousins used to play with it and hoist each other up to the hay mow. It took very little effort, and she was able to pull her much older - and heavier - cousin up to the mow with no problem.
Without telling them what it was for, she explained what she was looking for to a clerk in a hardware store a couple towns away. What she now had was smaller, made of heavy plastic, but essentially the same block and tackle mechanism that grandpa had once used to hoist hay bales up into the barn. She would pull it as short as possible, and then let it out an inch or two. Then she would connect it to the hook and to the top of the wagon wheel. Pulling it up slightly enabled her lift the support chain off the hook. Then she would lower the chandelier down to a serving cart that was normally out on the back deck.
Putting herself in place of the chandelier was a little trickier. There were two slightly smaller hooks that carried the chain of the chandelier over to the wall. From there a cord hung down and plugged into an outlet. By trial and error, Mary discovered that if she ran the rope through those hooks, she could pull downward alongside the wall and easily pull the chandelier up in place. In fact, if she tied a two gallon bucket to the rope all the way up at the ceiling, and then filled that bucket with sand, it would descend to the floor and pull the wagon wheel up almost to the top.
Rube Goldberg would have been pleased with her next step. She placed a stepladder next to the bucket, and put a plank across the top. One end of the plank went under the bucket. From the other end, she hung a four gallon insulated water jug which was suspended over a plastic trough like you use to mix concrete. A rope ran from the top of the big handle of the water jug to a plant hook in the ceiling above it. The jug had a pouring valve like you would find on a large coffee pot. You could push down to pour a cup of water, or lift up to lock the valve open. By slowly adding sand to the bucket and water to the jug, she was able to keep the system in balance. When she opened the valve on the water jug, the water would slowly drain out into the trough until the weight of the jug could no longer counterbalance the bucket and the bucket would begin to descend. The board would slide off the ladder and drop to the ground beneath the bucket. The water jug would drop slightly and then hang there swaying above the trough.
