Some Things Shouldn't Last

Yay! I made it to one of my favorite days of the year! I went to bed at 10:00 last night, so I wasn't there for the very beginning, but I am seldom awake for any midnights. The kids said they rung in the New Year, and I think I heard noises at 3:30, but that just could have been another chipmunk.

I had the sincere pleasure of changing the pages from December to January and turning around my FlyLady perpetual calendar. I started over at the beginning of my books _Simple Abundance_ and _Romancing the Ordinary_, both by Sarah Ban Breathnach, so I can read through them again this year.

In other news, the Christmas tree didn't last until the 7th after all. I had planned to leave it up for a few more days, but then I got the bright idea to take off one kind of ornament each day so that by Sunday, there would only be the long ribbons adorning the branches from top to bottom. Riiiiight.

With the very best of intentions, I brought in the box for the white glass ornaments. I did a bauble treasure-hunt and found all of them, with a little help from extra pairs of eyes as they passed through the living room. Then I took the box of ornaments outside and put them in the Big Tree storage bin. Brushing my hands, I smiled in triumph as I realized I wasn't going to have to spend consecutive hours disassembling our holiday centerpiece the way I had used a perfectly good day setting it up. I would be able to spread out the chore over a whole week!

I came back inside and looked at the tree, no longer perfectly symmetrical because of the now-empty spaces where the glass ornaments used to be. Hm...maybe I wouldn't be able to make this procedure last a whole week after all. So, I went back outside and got the box for the green glass ornamants and began to locate them. On my third trip around the tree, I realized what a ridiculous waste of time THIS was. I needed to just yank off the bows as I went along, forget the "making it last." I'm apparently not capable of that kind of "in process" event.

Back out to the garage to bring in ALL the boxes. And in 15 minutes the tree was stripped bare of everything except the lights. This year, we chose not to cinch the tree-parts with rope and squash them back in the original box, (although it can be and has been done, for 4 years running, in fact.) Perhaps that's why the original lights stopped working--large segments at a time. We spent 7 hours in early December clipping off the tightly-wound lighting cords, and then I spent another 3 hours re-lacing the branches with new lights, plus another 3 hours hanging decorations. And I wonder where all my time goes. Is there any question why we take off the whole month of December from school?

Anyway, this year, we decided to stand the tree in a corner of the garage, covered in blankets, to wait patiently for eleven months until we need it again. What I failed to notice before we started THAT project was that there was STUFF in that corner. And in order to put that stuff somewhere...some other stuff had to be moved...is this starting to sound familiar?

*Sigh* At least the garage is sort of organized now. I went through all the boxes of decorations (not just Christmas, but ALL of the household holiday decorations,) and flung what I was certain I wouldn't use again. I managed to condense five large shelves of containers down to three and a half, and I *sort of* put all the bins in chronological order as I'll need them throughout the year. (There's that OCD rearing it's ugly head again.) All the small outside toys are in two boxes, and the seasonal dishes are in their places.

Yes, I change out our dishes every three months so the pictures on the plates match the season. China pattern? No way! I like variety too much. And I obviously enjoy complicating my life on a regular basis. Maybe it's a good thing that school starts back tomorrow so I'll have something worthwhile to do. At least I won't be teaching in the shadow of a half-naked Christmas tree.