Audra Jennings

When I didn't get my Christmas tree up until December 11 and said it would have to be up for a month, I didn't really intend for a good 10 days of that to be mostly dismantled in middle of the floor.  A good two-thirds to three-fourths came down on January 1. And there it sat with piles of branches around the floor--piles I had to walk around in order to get to the bathroom for 10 days. I finally made myself finish the job last night. What remains is this: I truly am amazed my tree doesn't look like Charlie Brown's after it looses all these fake needles every time I put it up. My tree is still more full than any tree you can buy these days. I have a little room vacuum upstairs that is now protesting after trying to suck all this up. It now smells when you turn it on. I emptied out the canister hoping it would take care of the rest. Now I think I'm going to have to cut hair out. I think it's the hair caught up on the roller I'm smelling. ...

My usual approach to putting up a Christmas tree is that if it isn't up for a solid month, it's not worth putting up. I didn't finish mine until the 11th (explanation on yesterday's post).  It only took two days instead of three to get it up this time. I went pretty fast. However, it just won't be up for long. There's two weeks until Christmas, and I won't even see it on the weekends, hopefully, since it's up in the office. Same for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. If I could pull it into the closet decorated, I would. It's a little too wide.  I meticulously arranged the ornaments just so, but you can't really see them on this end of the room. There's no light on that side of the room, so you can't really see what is on the tree. With the purple glow, it's hard to see colors. The flash helps though.  I do have to add that I like it upstairs in the office vs. downstairs.

After working on it three nights, Tuesday about midnight (guess that makes it actually Wednesday), I finally finished my Christmas decorating. I don't even think I'm having a party this year, so I hope someone stops by to see it. Feels like such a waste just me seeing it. Yes, it's OCD on overdrive. All my ornaments are in a box with dividers, organized by color/shape. I take all the identical ornaments and space them around the tree. Then the next ones, then the next ones. There are 9 strings of lights on the tree alone. I have issues. I've done just Disney trees, Wizard of Oz, a blue theme with both mixed in, a red tree, a just purple tree, a just orange tree, then decided to do purple and teal with the orange mixed in. The orange was for Peyton because she got mad that I had a purple tree and that was Paige's favorite color too.