On Decorating

One of the great challenges of growing older is that the closer you get to the bottom of the bowl, the faster the rotation.  Sorry for the toilet analogy, there, but hey, you know what I mean.

As a child, Christmas seemed to take forever to arrive.  I'd start combing the TV Guide in early December for fear that I'd miss "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer," "Frosty the Snowman," or "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town."  I also looked out for the Charlie Brown Christmas special, but I wasn't as attached to it as I was the others.  Now it saddens me that I can go to the local Costco and purchase all three of these as a collection.

I feel like part of my childhood is sitting in a box with a price tag of $12.99 on it. 

Along with trick-or-treating, Schoolhouse Rock, and Saturday morning cartoons.

I can't bring myself to buy them...although I've entertained the idea numerous times. 

I've come to like the haunting music from the Charlie Brown Christmas as an adult.  Probably because it doesn't involve a hippopotamus...

Although barking dogs totally rock...

Oh, come on.  You know it's cute the first fifty times you hear it each Christmas unless you are a serious cat person or are currently medicated from Christmas overload.

Anyway, where was I?  Time going quickly...

Oh.  Yeah.  Sorry.

This Christmas, I vowed that it would be different.  I'd finish a Christmas project before Thanksgiving...and I did. I'd shop early...and I did that too.  That I'd simplify and attempt to freak out less. 

Oh.

Well, here I sit on the eve of the 10th of December with numerous boxes waiting to go back into the attic.  My Christmas china is not unpacked, and every conceivable surface of this house is covered in something in transition.  I have a broken Santa figurine that Big Dave needs to fix, an empty fruit bowl, and five thousand (exaggeration...but only slightly) pieces of paper on my dining room table.  My sideboard has chargers from the ladies' tea last weekend, four candle holders, and Spode items scattered randomly (still in their boxes).  I have two unwrapped gifts, some loan papers from a rate modification that Chase insists that we need to do so that we'll love them forever (and save $60 a month) and some Ritz crackers shaped like snowflakes sitting to the left of this computer. 

On the kitchen counters is a huge platter that just screams denial with the message "Christmas Calories Don't Count" on it.  And they don't in December.  But come January...O.M.Gosh.

The letters that will eventually spell "NOEL" and "JOY" look more like "YOE" and "LNJO" right now and there are two empty gallons of tea sitting on the stove for reasons that only my nineteen year old knows.  There is also a quarter inch of diet root beer in the container that I bought for fifty cents at Publix last night that was just apparently WAY too much for Big Dave to fit in whatever glass he was using. (Or he was waiting for me to take it to the trash...more likely explanation.)

Needless to say...other than the fact that my tree is up...my "Ho Ho Ho" is more like "No No No" right now.

But tomorrow will change all that...because I'm not resting until the

Twelve massive boxes
Eleven china Santas
Ten place settings
Nine swags of greenery
Eight odd snowmen
Seven strings of lights
Six outside wreaths
FIVE RANDOM ELVES
Four Christmas trees
Three stuffed Santas
Two poinsettias and
One half done house...are dealt with.

Or I'll be chronicling that failure here.  Probably with photos if I can get batteries for my backup camera since my main one is no longer with us.

But my point (lost with personal renditions of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" and the barking dogs) was that time is really going by quickly.  Too quickly.  Even for a well intentioned over-planner like me.  I'm almost ashamed that it is the 10th of December and my house doesn't look like "Redneck Living" would bother to have a photo shoot here...much less "Southern Living."  Sad but true.

Tomorrow that changes. 

Or not.