Christmas is over . . . That's always bittersweet to me because I love all the preparation and excitement in December building up to Christmas Day. Shopping, baking, wrapping, planing party menus, gathering with friends and even cleaning the house in anticipation of the Big Day. Christmas morning arrives with all its joy but by Christmas evening it seems like someone has stuck a pin in a balloon and I start to deflate until I am left lying in a pile of torn wrapping paper and dirty dishes. We have the week between Christmas and New Years to slowly sink back down from our Holiday High and by this weekend after New Years life has pretty much returned to normal . . . what ever that may be. Little Christmas, January 6th is tomorrow which means the three wise men have arrived at the manger in Bethlehem and Christmas is officially over.
But wait . . . there is a tree in my living room, Christmas decorations are still strewn about my house and there's a boat load of Christmas cookies sitting on the kitchen counter calling my name. Christmas is still in attendance big time at my house even though the month of January is full swing and the year has some how become 2020. My brain is done with Christmas but I can't rest until all the decorations are put away and the cookies are eaten. (I'm having a lot easier time getting rid of the cookies than I am getting rid of the decorations.)
And so this weekend I took a deep breath and started putting Christmas to rest for another year. This is one of the times that I really LOVE living in a condo. There are a lot less decorations to put away than when I owned a house. But even still it took all weekend to erase the evidence of the holiday. I put the last box of decorations into the shed at four this afternoon and by five I had found three things I had missed. Oh Well . . . that's what closets are for. The BIG accomplishment of the weekend was the dismantling of the Christmas tree. Let me say that I do NOT have a full size tree nor is it a real tree. The days of buying a real tree each year just so it could die a slow and painful death in my living room are long gone. Once I moved into a condo the full size tree also became a thing of the past. Condo's are not conducive to LARGE trees sitting in the middle of the room. With that thought in mind I purchased a lovely little 3 foot tree three years ago when I became a condo dweller. The tree is the perfect size and it came with lights already on it. All I have to do is connect the top to the bottom, plug it in and I have an instant Christmas tree to stand on the living room cabinet. It looks perfect and I have been super happy with it until . . . we plugged it in and NOTHING happened. What happened to the lights ???????? We checked the plugs, checked the connection, checked as many of the bulbs as we could find and yet nothing happened. My tree was as dark as the inside of the plastic bag I store it in. Now I don't know about you but to me a Christmas tree HAS to have lights. I can leave all the ornaments off of it just as long as it has lights.
Luckily I just happened to have a box of tiny colored lights that I had bought the end of last year "just in case". But in our infinite wisdom D and I made an executive decision to take the old set of lights off the tree before adding the new ones. Trouble is the old set that came with the tree were apparently welded on to the branches because we could NOT get those buggers off. And so for what ever reason we decided to CUT the wires of the old lights to try to get as many of them off as possible. Thinking back on it we could/should have left the old lights alone and just added the new set, no one would be the wiser. But cut we did and all was well with the world.
UNTIL . . . today I was putting the tree away and there were all sorts of pieces of wire hanging off branches so I decided to take the time to get all that old stuff out so we could start fresh next year. Little did I know what a chore that would become. The set of lights were attached to the branches with plastic clips that I had to bend to get open in order to get the wires off the branches. It took me over an hour to DE - LIGHT the tree. I am delighted that it is done because my type "A" personality would not rest knowing there were random wires hanging on my tree. The fact that no one would be able to see them and they were in no way interfering with the ornaments or new set of lights did not matter. I KNEW they were there and would not rest until I had cleaned them off.
And so my tree is de - lighted and I am delighted and all is well with the world until next year when I will have to buy a larger set of lights because the small string I have just isn't enough.
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