Others seem to go through this season being jolly. I really have to work to keep from snapping at them and fantasizing ways to do in everyone who asks if I've finished my shopping (which I have scarcely started at this point). Each Christmas season is like having a baby...you forget the pain or you'd never have another. At the beginning of the month I looked at all the empty spaces in my schedule and filled those hours up with three times what might have fit into them. There is no time for any of those things because I hadn't included everything that has to be done for Christmas.
In a house that is already stuffed everywhere, the only place to put a tree is in a space I have to create. A stack of heavy music books four feet high, the three foot long stack of books that had been on this chest, the 130 DVDs that I had no better place for after I converted them from VHS tapes...all this has to be carried upstairs for the duration. Carried up will be the chest on and in which they were contained. You must visual that finding the place to keep them for three weeks upstairs is like solving those puzzles that have a pile of geometrically shaped pieces that are supposed to fit in a little frame but when taken apart they seem to expand to double the surface area.
All knick-knacks, clocks, plants, vases, and whatevers on other surfaces also have to find new homes for a few weeks. Since teleportation is only in Sci-Fi, these moves can only be manually effected. In the afternoons the window candles must be turned on; before bed, turned off. (I finally decided that the one candle upstairs can be on all night since it is light activated). All the plants have to find new homes for a few weeks from their sunny home in the front window to make way for Santas, a Rosemany Tree and all sort of other reminders of Christmas.
Someone, please, explain this madness to me. What makes us continue this ritualized, masochistic effort at the coldest, darkest time of year. We crowd in greeting cards, letters, gift shopping, wrapping and all the stuff that people complain about yet, silently, through gritted jaws we plod like automatons doing the same things year after year...finally getting things finally put away somewhere between the middle of January and the next Christmas.
What a way to greet the New Year!
In a house that is already stuffed everywhere, the only place to put a tree is in a space I have to create. A stack of heavy music books four feet high, the three foot long stack of books that had been on this chest, the 130 DVDs that I had no better place for after I converted them from VHS tapes...all this has to be carried upstairs for the duration. Carried up will be the chest on and in which they were contained. You must visual that finding the place to keep them for three weeks upstairs is like solving those puzzles that have a pile of geometrically shaped pieces that are supposed to fit in a little frame but when taken apart they seem to expand to double the surface area.
All knick-knacks, clocks, plants, vases, and whatevers on other surfaces also have to find new homes for a few weeks. Since teleportation is only in Sci-Fi, these moves can only be manually effected. In the afternoons the window candles must be turned on; before bed, turned off. (I finally decided that the one candle upstairs can be on all night since it is light activated). All the plants have to find new homes for a few weeks from their sunny home in the front window to make way for Santas, a Rosemany Tree and all sort of other reminders of Christmas.
Someone, please, explain this madness to me. What makes us continue this ritualized, masochistic effort at the coldest, darkest time of year. We crowd in greeting cards, letters, gift shopping, wrapping and all the stuff that people complain about yet, silently, through gritted jaws we plod like automatons doing the same things year after year...finally getting things finally put away somewhere between the middle of January and the next Christmas.What a way to greet the New Year!
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