Another week gone already?
Are you ready for Christmas or Chanukah or Winter Solstice or Kwanzaa or whatever holiday)s) you celebrate?
Me, I have not packed away Thanksgiving yet. Well, the dishes, pots, silverware etc were put away, but my decorations are still out. I don't put out as many for Thanksgiving as I do for Christmas (maybe 1/20th as much as for Christmas or less), but I have the decorations from when we used to have the families here for Thanksgiving dinner and I still put them out – I need to.
I have to get them packed away and get the indoor Christmas decorations put out – at least most of them. I generally don't get to my bear village until Christmas Eve or even Christmas night so they “know” they will be put out late.
We still have a lot of stuff in the house that has to go back into our RV from when we cleared it out in October to take it in for the extended service time. The larger pieces – the bed assembly and such – are back in it. I have several fabric shopping bags with stuff from it, including the plastic containers that we use for food (snacks) storage when we travel. It has been bad weather most days around here the last week or so since I realized I had to get all that out to the RV. Oh, and the vacuum cleaner – we keep a hand held – plug in vacuum in the RV in case we make a mess and need to clean it up. (Lots of vents in the RV for air to move in and out so animals can smell food in it – hence the plastic containers and concern requiring a vacuum cleaner.) It is on my dining room table – not a good place for it to be.
We (and by we, I meant I) also have to store reenacting stuff in the box benches in the dining room that we store it in. We had the last event of the year that we needed our stuff for last Saturday – more on that later, if I remember – the only remaining events are the 6 days – this coming weekend and next – that we will be doing the candlelight night event at the local restoration village and we need little for that other than our period clothing.
Husband has to move his weaving stuff to our studio – won't be able to get to my side of same after he does, but the “loom room” will again be the living room when he does.
After all that I can start putting up the decorations and the trees.
We have been busy the last week since I spoke to all of you. I went to Manhattan to a client on Thursday, which took most of the day especially the travel back and forth. When I got home husband was waiting to pack our van for the reenactment event that was coming up on (now last) Saturday.
It was at a historic home that one of our members works at and was a colonial crafts event that we were allowed (encouraged) to sell our work at. The local community had their tree lighting and other events that day so crowds were expected in the community. Husband had been weaving scarves to sell. It was to rain on Friday – and maybe Saturday – so when I arrived home on Thursday husband suggested that we pack the van while it was not raining, though dark. He was concerned about the tables and racks getting wet on Saturday if it was still raining, so we put everything in very large plastic bags – some items needed two bags – one on each end, overlapping, to cover them. He had put two tables in the back of the van before I came home. We needed to put most of what we were bringing in the main section of the van (where we have a back seat and the middle seat is out & permanently in our storage shed to make an open space). It was a cold night and damp in advance of the rain. He went to slide the side door open and it did not budge. He tried again – and again. He then went in the front door and climbed through to the main section and went to open the door – which is pushing instead of pulling it open from outside as we thought that somehow it had frozen closed and needed to be forced open.
Ha ha! He get the door open and the overhead rubber gasket that keeps water from going into the van fell down – on me. It would not fit back into place. I called our mechanic – if I have not mentioned it is a local shop and 4 blocks from our house – it was almost 5:30 and I thought they closed at same. His newest mechanic answered (there are 3 including the owner) and he knows us by name from all of our crazy car problems. I explained and he told me we should bring it over – if we left it sitting it would flood in the coming rain, at the very least they would have it indoors and fix it the next day. We drove over hoping the side door would not roll open – it did not. He got the gasket back in place and we were set again. We went home and loaded the van. Friday we ran normal errands and picked up deli turkey to make sandwiches for the next day.
Saturday it was misty more than raining and we were able to get everything inside to set up dry. We had a nice room in the museum – the exhibition was on 19th century needlework so it went well with his weaving and my embroidery demonstration. We fit in the room perfectly. The event had people there most of the day – estimate is 75-100 people and since it was raining on and off and nasty the rest of the day, that was pretty good.
Still no chance to pack away Thanksgiving decorations and start on Christmas though. Each day has had new things to waste the day. I did manage to fit in taking most of the smaller exams I need to take to prepare income taxes next year for pay. They are online classes from an approved company and I use them every year. Two more small classes and tests and then the large 3 hour timed test – 6 hours of class time to do. That last one is always the one that scares me. I know that someway I will fit them in before the end of the month as I always do.
I hope to get the stuff out to the RV and pack away the Thanksgiving – at least the downstairs stuff, if not the Teddy Village Thanksgiving stuff tomorrow and hopefully start with the dining room decorations. I need to push a large linen style looking chest from the living room to the dining room before I start the dining room. It holds a small sized tree in the dining room and the large tree in the living room goes where the chest is the rest of the year. (It looks like a linen or hope chest, but instead of the top lifting the front drops down and there are drawers in it for DVDs – husband made it.)
The front hall and the living have decorations also and then the 3 downstairs trees – big one in the living room, small ones in the dining room and studio and beaded one that I made in the living room also – on the coffee table. I was going to change the bear figurines (separate from the teddy village) that are in a corner shelf unit in the living room – but his big loom is in front of the corner unit.
I did put up the wire hanging piece we bought a few years ago to hold Christmas/holiday cards. It is a long piece with little wire spots to clip papers – in this the cards – to and I hang it from our mug rack near the ceiling in the kitchen with red ribbons. I had figured a better way to hang it last year when I took it down and clipped a note into one of the wire spots to remind me – good idea it worked perfectly and I clipped the note back in for next year.
We did finish our shopping – we bought books for his two nieces – the only gifts we buy. I send my adult niblings (that is actually a work – I made it up and then found it already existed – it means nieces and nephews combined) checks for gifts. He has bought some DVDs and such – which he would have bought anyway – and given it to me to wrap for Christmas – I actually stick them in recycled Christmas gift bags – why waste paper. At some point we have to figure out what we are going to do for Christmas Eve dinner – maybe the Asian buffet we go to will be open? We are also figuring we will go there for dinner tomorrow as we won't be able to eat out this or next weekend due to the reenactment, so it will break the meals at home up a bit.
THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -
Whatever holiday you celebrate – take time to enjoy it. In the future it will generally be the good times that are remembered – if the problems and misadventures are remembered they will become humorous in retrospect - “Hey remember the year that Susan and Carl got into the box of chocolates when they were little and took a bite out of each and then put them back?” “Remember the year we forgot to bring Ellen's gift and we all had to get together again the next week for her to get it?” Trust me, these things are terrible in the moment, but hilarious in the future.
It is the memories of the time together - even if you are just two like us - that matter in the end. If the decorations are not finished – they will be by new year's. If you will be alone try to find someplace where there are other people, I know that there are community holiday dinners even around here - where no one would think that they exist.
Oh, and as I learned at home growing up – there is always a room to throw all the stuff I you can't figure out what to do with in so the house will look nice for any family or friends who come by. :-)
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