It Was Suppose To Be This Easy

Since we won't be in town this weekend I decided to put the Christmas tree up today. When I started I had no idea of the stress that would soon begin to invade my peaceful day with no kids. Three years ago we bought a prelight tree that I was confident would last for quite a few years. I loved that tree. Now it's dead to me.

I got started at 8:30 this morning to find that many of the bulbs were burned out. I made a quick trip to Target to get some new bulbs and came home only to find they didn't fit. I then left again to try Menards and came home with the wrong size again.

Giving up, I went back to putting the tree together. Once I got to the top section, I was horrified to find that half of the lights didn't work. Sick to my stomach about it, I began trying different fuses. Didn't help. I went through and tested every single bulb, people! Still didn't help. So I then decided to pull off the prelight strands and I now have a half of strand of nonworking lights hanging from the d*#% tree.

Will someone please tell me what to do?!?! I really don't want to go out and buy a new tree, but I'm afraid that if I take off the rest of the lights on the partially nonworking strand, my tree is going to look mangled and that the lights I replace them with won't match the rest of the tree.

I will never buy a prelight tree again!