If it’s been quiet here, and it has, it’s because I’ve somehow managed to make this Christmas, like many others in the past, a hectic time. It feels a lot like Santa’s workshop the week before Christmas.
In fact, it’s been a hectic three months, what with Leslie’s surgery, our aborted attempts to remodel the downstairs by installing new tile and Pergo floors. A $12,000 price tag on top of having to replace a hot water heater, buy a new dining room table and chairs, and replace a failed microwave, helped us to decide that we would have to put these off for awhile.
We still decided to convert the family room into a dining room in order to accommodate more than four people at the table. Me, being me decided that if we were going to move all the furniture we needed to paint several walls in the process. So we did, and so we are. Still.
Tyson and his family are coming for Christmas, and I’m determined to have the “best Christmas ever.” So, much of what we’re doing is in preparation for their arrival. Personally, I think the place looks better and more comfortable than it’s ever been.
We spent the weekend hauling out decorations and finding new places to fit them all in since nothing is quite the same as last year. And, of course, I had to add a few new decorations this year, as in past years. I’m hoping that somehow merely buying Jim Shore’s Three Wise Men will impart a greater wisdom to me in the upcoming year.
Somewhere along the way, Dawn and Tyson decided that we would make presents for each other this year rather than buy them, continuing last year’s decision that there must be a better way to celebrate Christmas than buying an endless chain of things that no one really needed, or wanted. Ordinarily, I would have been the one most pleased by that decision. But with all the remodeling my workshop, i.e., the garage, is one gigantic mess, requiring one trip to recycling and another to the dump.
In other words, we’re going to be out of town for three days next week, Tyson’s coming the 23rd, and I haven’t even finished making our traditional cookies, much less finishing making Christmas presents.
I’m afraid it’s going to get even quieter around here until after New Years, especially since I’ve decided that reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is definitely not putting me in the Christmas mood.