Prep Work

It's been a weekend of domesticity and pain relievers.

I have no idea what I've done to my left knee but that bad thing hurts when I walk or if I touch it an I'm starting to walk with a limp. Of course climbing up and down a stepladder while washing windows didn't help but I cannot, in good conscience, put up decorations for Christmas on filth encrusted windows. Plus it was rather amusing to watch the people on the street yesterday while I was on window washing duty. There's public parking on my street and the amount of jockeying for the few available parking spaces so folks could get down to the Christmas market was a sight to behold. A word to the wise, people - have a little patience with one another while getting in and out of the parking spaces. Y'all are gonna crack each other's fenders and your Christmas spirit will ruined.

My MIL was here today and she went down with me to the basement to get my boxes of decorations out and upstairs. I could have probably done it alone but #1 I was afraid my knee would buckle on me while on the stairs with boxes (there's one flight of stairs down to the basement - the rest I can do on the elevator), #2 I didn't want to make trip after trip from the back of the basement where my storage area is located, and #3 I don't like to go into the basement alone at night. Or in the day, for that matter. Don't get me wrong - in reality, my basement is perfectly safe. It's beind a big, locked door. Unlike the basement in my former apartment house, the basement here is quite clean. Everything is painted all white and while there are rodent bait boxes around, I've never seen a mouse or rat there (can't say that about my former apartment where a rat once literally fell from a duct above my head and landed on the grocery carrier I was pulling behind me - I believe my screams are still circling around out in the galaxy). I've never even seen a spider in our basement. I've never even seen a spider web. Still and all, I don't like being down there. It seems almost too quiet and too clean. Add to it that it's like a labyrinth down there with its winding passages and my over-active, true crime story fueled imagination goes into overdrive.

Anyway the decorations are back upstairs with me and now I've got the dilemma of how I want to arrange the decorations. I don't know why this is difficult for me each year. I know what decorations I have. I know what my cabinets and tables look like. Why can't I figure out how I want to arrange the decorations without having to switch it all around for about three days after I first set it up? You'd think after all this time I'd do it from memory but every year I fiddle around and fiddle around until I get it just right.

I'm beginning to think that I'm merely playing at being annoyed at the fiddling around and deep down I enjoy it. Any excuse to mess around with my Santa collection.



C'mon. Who wouldn't want to play with that fat man?