Now that Thanksgiving and Christmas are looming large, I think it's time for me to stop spuddling about when I should be getting this house in order. I think someday in the not-so-near future seems like a reasonable goal, dontcha think?
Every year, for every holiday, I have to put up a plethora of tchotchkes and gewgaws. Lacking the necessary space, I have to store them away before I can bring out our decorations. It doesn't help that I use newspapers to wrap them before storage. I end up reading the articles and ads and usually lose a couple of hours. Anything to delay the inevitable.
Maybe that's why I've started putting less and less of our holiday collectibles on display each year. I always wondered why my mother had gotten to the point where she had almost nothing up at Christmastime besides her tree that she recruited the grands to crawl up into the attic, drag down and put up along with a few neat village houses she'd place under the tree. Now I know. As we get older, these trappings get to be a hassle. Don't get me wrong; I LOVE having the entire house filled with holiday cheer; I'm just getting too old and tired to deal with it. I'd try to recruit the kids or grandkids to help but they're too busy. (Translation: I'm picky about where everything goes. I'd spend another day putting it all where I like it and then worry, they'd notice and get upset so it's better if I do it myself even if it does take me a week.)
When our kids were young, I'd decorate the entire house for every holiday. Most of the decorations were the cheap paper kind I'd pick up at TG&Y the day after but at least I made the effort. Now, as the years have gone by and the kids have homes and families of their own, it just doesn't seem worth the effort to unpack our 30 boxes of decorations so now I'm down to decorating three rooms, four if I count the breakfast nook.
Yesterday, I decided I needed to organize my everyday dust-catchers before unpacking the decorations, so I put on Christmas movies to get me in the mood but not much got done, organizing-wise. If back-to-back-to-back 'The Santa Clause' movies can't do it, nothing can. They never fail to put a smile on my face although I do think they phoned in the second movie I enjoy it nonetheless.
David put up the Christmas tree and before you holler, 'Wait! What?' let me explain. He put it up so he can try and figure out why the lights the tree came with don't twinkle. We bought this tree a couple of years ago from our local home improvement store and right out of the box the dang thang was defective. We went back to the store just to find out that they had already sold out of this particular tree, so an exchange was out. We contacted the manufacturer who informed us they couldn't replace the bad controller, so we added our own twinkle lights and went on with our lives.
Year two of the defective tree came and went with us deciding it'd be too much trouble to try the old switcheroo by buying a new tree, putting the old one in the box, and returning to the store for a refund. (My goody two-shoe conscience would have a fit.) Besides, I could never keep a straight face while trying to secure said refund.
Now Christmas number three is coming fast, and David is scouring the Internet for ways that he might be able to fix it. I've become accustomed to having our twinkle lights added to the stationary ones it came with but if he wants to spend time working on it, more power to him. I've got better ways to waste my time like sitting in my recliner watching one of our dozens of Christmas DVDs.
The only thing that could make this day better would be if (1) it would snow (just enough to create a wonderland atmosphere), (2) all my knick-knacks would be stored and the Christmas decorations were magically in their place, and (3) all my shopping would be done, the presents wrapped and under the tree by now. When our kids were small, I'd have all our shopping done before Thanksgiving. I wonder where that woman went and when she was replaced with this procrastinating Queen? Oh, well. Even if it does take me a week, I'm content.
Update: We contacted the company again and we'll be receiving a part to fix our tree, I hope. Our holiday festivities will be saved.