Sparkly, pretty and Utterly Useless

I found them! I finally found them! I have been through 10 large plastic bins, at least 8 cardboard boxes, every bloody drawer in the house and tonight I found them. Why I put them in the hanging mesh pocket of an over the door closet organizer, I will never know. Apparently by the time I bought them last January, I had already stowed the boxes and bins away for the season and it seemed like the most likely place for them. God knows what I was thinking. I guess I was just looking for a slot they would fit in, so it never occurred to me that come Christmas 2009, I would have zero memory of where I put them. I only knew that I had purchased them. I remembered it clearly. I was at the R.O.M. for a belated birthday lunch last January with my dear friends Margot and Janet and we did a little browse through the museum gift shop after lunch at C-5 and a peek at the "Diamond Exhibit" and it was late enough in the month for them to have marked them down by 75% - a steal for sure. Usually if you wait that long into the after- Christmas sales, there's nothing left but garish coloured lights no one wanted or boxes of glass ornaments with at least one broken bauble, like a cracked egg among a dozen, but these beauties were still hanging around - literally. They were perfect. The most realistic icicles I had ever seen. Heavy, long, crystal clear - you could almost see the drops of melting ice water dripping from them. A pretty sparkle of silver dust capped the tops and they hung from delicate little strings - I had a picture in my mind immediately where they would hang. There were only five left and I scooped up every last one of them - odd numbers being the ideal grouping for the scene I had conjured up in my mind for Christmas 2009. My plan was to hang them outside on either side of the front door, in the recesses of the side lights, 2 on one side and 3 on the other to form an asymmetrical display of fake winter chill. I would hang them at slightly different heights to add to the realism. Normally this would have been done a couple of weeks ago when I hung the wreath on the door and filled the urns with greenery and hung the lights, but since they were MIA until tonight, they will have to be a late addition to the holiday decor at the front door. Or maybe not. Now that I have unwrapped them and revisited them, I find them so pretty and sparkling, I am afraid that if I hang them outside, the wind and sun and weather will wreak havoc on them and ruin them. I could hang them inside, but then they would look like fake icicles, and they really do look so real they deserve their chance to fool the world. So, I guess I will take the chance, allow mother nature to have her way with them and with any luck they will last the season looking like their real counterparts. In any case, they will last longer than the real thing would and I will enjoy seeing them glistening at the front door when I come home every night. With the price I paid, I suppose they are disposable if need be and it will be one less thing for me to pack away until Christmas 2010. Besides, if I don't hang them outside - what else would I do with them? Things like this fit into the "utterly useless" category if you don't use them when they should be used. I suppose I could keep one in the car glove box if I ever needed to defend myself - their weapon-like shape and pointed tips would be enough to scare off any would-be attacker. They are almost too heavy to hang on the average Balsam or Fraser fir, so that's out of the question. So, it is decided - these utterly useless spikes of icy acrylic will hang at my front door, useless and beautiful like so many other shiny baubles that have come before them until it is time to go into hiding for another year. At least next year, I will be able to find them. Maybe.