Well, another year gone by – they really do seem to go by faster and faster.
As those of you who have been reading my posts for over a year (and I thank you for doing so) I don't believe in making resolutions. I never kept them and felt guilty for not doing so. Instead I just decide that what is past is past and the future is a clean slate.
We still are running behind on getting things in life done.
The Saturday before Christmas I realized that there was no way that our extensive (okay, overly and ridiculously extensive) inside Christmas decorations would be put up before or during Christmas. We were doing three nights with our reenactment unit at an 18th century house in a local restoration village. The event is annual, with the days for it changing every year. It is a candlelight night event – each house is lit as it would have been in the period it is displayed and the Christmas decorations also match the period. The other houses in the village are set in the 1800s; the one we interpret is set in the late 1700s – we say to the guests coming in that it is 1775, the year that our unit generally “is in”. While it is an evening event husband and I have to start dressing by 3 pm to drive there and have the set up on time and by the time we shut the house down (a lot of candles to blow out and we have to make sure that no one in our unit left anything behind) , lock it up, drive home and change back to modern clothing it is around 11 pm and we are making dinner and sitting down to eat it. So basically the days we do this event – we do almost nothing else. So I would not getting to work on decorating the house on Saturday or Sunday night. I had to take 2 more (online) exams for my professional education to work next year and I would have left – Monday before Christmas Eve, Christmas Eve, Thursday after Christmas, and Monday before New Year's Eve to take the classes. Not being completely crazy I knew that I had to take them Sunday after the event and Monday nights, so that on the extremely, extremely rare chance I did not pass both exams and had to take one (or the other) class again, I had a chance to do so. Hence, there would no time to put up the decorations, especially since our living room was not cleared up from husband's weaving due to a recent sales event we went to, the dining room still had stuff for the RV in it (I tried to take same out the week before – but it was COLD and husband did not want me to open the RV door as it would make it cold inside(?).) Plus reenacting stuff that stores in the box/benches that we bring to event and they are kept along the dining room walls – and they needed “straightening up”. So as all this hit while at the reenactment event, I fought back a couple of tears and decided that even if 80 or 90% of our Christmas is the decorations, it just would not be this year. Since we were married the only year we have not decorated for Christmas in the house was the year we had the bed bugs – oh, well, 2 years of 40 is not a bed record.
I thought about what to do as an alternative. I was concerned about telling husband about the no decorations – he looks forward to them. I came up with I would set up the small tree that we normally set up in our studio covered with ornaments we have made, in the living room on a table and put a limited number of favored ornaments on it. I approached husband about this and said to him “We are not going to have decorations this year.” His reaction was that he had already realized this and had been afraid to say anything to me about it as he did not want me to take it as a challenge. I told him of my plan about the small tree and he thought it a great idea.
I set the tree up on Christmas Eve afternoon. I also wrapped the gifts for his nieces and for him that afternoon. We have most of the decorations in 6 large plastic boxes. I store the boxes in a corner of our basement. To make life easy when I put the house decorations on top of the pile, so I just took those boxes off the stack and put them aside (on matching boxes that hold the bear village Christmas stuff in a separate pile as the stack would be too tall otherwise for the room). I store the ornaments in 4 boxes which are numbered so the nicest ones are in box 1 to be featured and get prime choice of locations, down to box 4 which has the fill in at the end decorations. So I opened box 1 on the top of the pile and looked in – I made the angel we use on the tree and she has two friends that husband I also stitched – they came out. Then I was looking at what else was there and convenient. I took out more ornaments that we have made and went upstairs to set up the tree.
I had planned to put the tree on an outdoor type of table with slats that husband uses for setting up his loom – but the feet of the stand did not match the slat positions. I stood and tried to think where I could I find something to put on the tabletop – thought of a small table that we take to reenactment events and the top of it was in the dining room. It fit the table perfectly and even though there is hardware under it to attach the legs, it did not rock. I was concerned the three might scratch it and that might upset husband so I went looking for something fabric to put on it. I found two old, worn hand towels in green. I covered the table, set up the tree, and then folded the towels over the stand to make a tree skirt – perfect.
I put the ornaments I had brought upstairs on the tree. Much too bare. Back to box 1 in the basement. Hmmm, ornaments dated with the year we got married – good, ornaments of Geo Washington and Thomas Jefferson and their houses, good. What else? Luckily I label the small (old gift) boxes that hold the ornaments as several are packed in each one and the only way to get them back in the boxes is to know what goes in each, so I was able to scan the outside of the boxes and find some ornaments from a Folk craft festival we have gone to since we started dating. I left it at that – with actual blank space on the tree. As I went through wrapping the gifts and such I found a new ornament we bought (crafts store going out of business $1 teddy bear ornament for 50c – had to buy same) and the membership one we received from Colonial Williamsburg for 2019 – both of them were added. I did not have the on/off switched extension cord,which is stored with the large tree, so found a regular one and we plug and unplug the tree by hand. Oh, and there was a large light up teddy bear on the box stack, so I brought him upstairs and sat him on the bench husband uses when weaving. Finished, such as it was to be.
We went out for Christmas Eve dinner to the Asian buffet we go to a weekend night. When there we discussed the decorations. Husband said to me “How hard would be it to get out the Christmas stockings also?” So they went out also when we got home.
As the week went alone we decided that we missed the Christmas and Chanukah teddy bears (and some stuffed friends of theirs. New Year's Eve I managed to pull most if not all of them from their storage box and put them out. I also decorated the tree in the Teddy Village the same night. Right now it is New Year's Day night – I had planned to finish setting up the village with the bears “that come to the parade” today or tonight, but husband had plans to go out for dinner (Wendys) and then a movie so I did not have a chance – just got home from the movies and I am writing to all of you (will get them) out tomorrow.
So, we did what we felt was the minimum decorating for the holidays that we felt comfortable with. The walls of Jericho did not shake and fall. Most people might even think it plenty of decorating. I plan next year to make sure it all goes up on time. Today when we shut off the RV from charging its batteries (plugged it in yesterday) I finally moved the rest of the stuff for it back into the RV for the winter and got my spare pair of warm socks out of it to wash and use during the winter.
Normally on Wednesdays I start laundry for the week - not this week, as we went to the movies. The laundry will get done tomorrow and Friday, maybe even Saturday. I write and send out the newsletter for my embroidery chapter the last Wednesday of the month as we meet the first Wednesday – since this month we are meeting the second Wednesday (a meeting on New Year's Day would not work), I started it before we went out for dinner – it will be a day late – hey, sometimes that happens, it will still be in plenty of time before the meeting.
There is only so much time that I have use and I have to deal with that idea. What can be done is done, what cannot, has to ignored and/ore delayed. I hope over the next year in general to be better caught up on everything which has been slipping our fingers this past year plus and get life back to a normal level of unfinished things.
THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -
You can only do what you can do with the time you have – try to let the small things go. If you did make resolutions last year and did not keep them, see what is important and try to do better at one or two of them and don't make a long list of resolutions as then you will not keep any of them. Just try to deal with one or two problem and see where you go from there.
A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL.
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