This Christmas, just fix something around the house
Charles Schultz was ahead of his time when it came to feminism
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Two of the dopest lines I’ve ever heard from any Christmas movie came from “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”
The first one
Lucy van Pelt: I know how you feel about all this Christmas business, getting depressed and all that. It happens to me every year. I never get what I really want. I always get a lot of stupid toys or a bicycle or clothes or something like that.
Charlie Brown: What is it you want?
Lucy van Pelt: Real estate.
The second one
Sally Brown (in a letter to Santa): If it seems too complicated, make it easy on yourself. How about tens and twenties? (Charlie Brown interrupts to complain about commercialism.) All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.
I watched my favorite Christmas movie tonight in my bedroom, and I kept looking up at my bedroom light switch. Why? I’m still amazed that I replaced it. I have zero electrical experience. But when my bathroom light stopped working out of nowhere, I put the electrical repairs off for three weeks. I just didn’t want to shell out the $200+ for an electrician to come out to fix it. Instead, I bought a bunch of cheap motion-detector lights and strategically placed them all over my bathroom. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they lit my bathroom as much as electricity. The only problem: The lights kept going out while I was in the shower or sitting on the toilet.
Eventually I had to admit that I’d either needed to pony up the $200 to get this light switch repaired or constantly wave my arms around every couple of minutes for the rest of my life. I reached out to the neighborhood handyman, Tyrone, from my old condo rental and was pleasantly surprised when he offered to fix the switch for $20, and he had a spare light switch in his truck. He came over the same day I called, and it took him less than 10 minutes to repair my light switch. While Tyrone rambled on about red wires and black wires, I half-listened to be polite. I had zero interest in retaining this information. And then my bedroom light went out a year later.