Someone in this house is up to no good.

Before Justin and I went out to get our Christmas tree on Sunday, I plugged in all of our lights to make sure they worked – that way we could pick up some new lights if some of them didn’t survive the off-season in the attic. I was pleased to see that they all did, in fact, still work.

Justin and I cruised around the tree lot, picked out a great one, and I carried it out to the car while Justin walked behind me swinging a bag of pine cones.

Or something like that. I don’t know, the details are hazy.

But I’m pretty sure I got the tree off of the car, if this picture is any indication:

Then again, there isn’t a follow-up picture of me being crushed beneath the tree, so I can’t be sure.

Either way, we got the tree in the house (with almost no help from Brody)

and got it set up in the stand. We wrapped the lights around it and plugged them in, ready to be dazzled by their beauty, and – I’m sure you can see where this is going – one half of one of the strands of lights didn’t work.

I did some investigating and it appeared that the culprit was a frayed (dare I say “chewed off?”) wire that had somehow appeared while we were gone.

I’m not pointing any fingers, but…

someone in the house looked a little bit too innocent for my liking.

Let’s zoom in on that mug, shall we?

Yup, definitely trouble. And yup, definitely tape on the couch from when Brody was a puppy and went ape all over the place.

I headed out last night to try to find some replacement lights. I thought I remembered seeing some at CVS,  which is right by our house, so I went over after work. They were selling tiny boxes of 30 lights that were long enough to wrap around Brody’s leg twice, so I scoffed and peaced out for Home Depot.

Nothing. Not a normal tree light to be found. All they had were those crazy LED numbers that can be seen from space.

Fine, Home Depot. If you’re going to make it difficult, I’ll just support your competitor, Lowe’s.

Same deal. Apparently I missed the memo that normal Christmas lights are so passé

Fine, HD and Lowe’s, I’ll just buy a dozen or so of those tiny boxes of 30 lights from CVS that I had scoffed at a mere hour ago. You leave me no choice.

So that’s where we stand. We’ve got no less than half a baker’s dozen strands of lights adorning our tree right now. The short ones don’t even go all the way around the tree, they’re just draped across the front. So if you come over, please just inspect the tree from a distance.

And watch out for this clown: