4 pm: The front foyer has been cleared of furniture and cleaned. The boxes have all been carried up from the basement. Christmas is about to throw up all over this house.
4:44 pm: Oh, yeah - this part. The part where I get the tree up but can't remember the order of the plugs (it's a prelit) so I spend 40 minutes plugging and unplugging them over and over and over until I have to give up for a few minutes and watch a couple scenes of Big Fish while I chill out.
5:40 pm: Close enough. There's one short strand that I can't get figured out so I'm moving on. After a quick bite of the brownies I just made (because the oven is fixed!) I am off to fluff the tree and start trimming.
6:20 pm: The movie's over and I've eaten two more brownies. Okay, three. Anyway, I've fluffed the tree and moved it around 100 times. I settled on leaving it in the corner, where it goes every year.
6:42 pm: I started unpacking the ornaments and got distracted by the new ones (something shiny!) that I bought a couple weeks ago in Kimmswick. I've also started catching up on episodes of No Reservations.
7:18 pm: I broke one. And apparently trimming the tree makes you people amorous. Good to know. 1 row of brownies gone.
7:59 pm: Still trimming. Getting close. Bourdain is in New York. Last update he was in Saudi Arabia. Realized I ate brownies for dinner and now I want broccoli.
9:18 pm: It's on like Donkey Kong.
How long did that take? You know, if you took out all the piddling I did in the process? Although once I started the actual trimming, I worked nonstop, calculating the placement of every ornament as if a large cash prize was involved but sadly one wasn't.
This elf is one of my favorite ornaments. My grandma always had these guys on her tree but hers got so old they finally fell apart. I found this little guy sitting on a shelf all by himself in an antique shop.
An no tree would be complete without a sock monkey.I still have a bunch of other stuff to put around the house but that's all I've got in me for today. I'm going to go eat something with salt in it to try to forget all the brownies. And then maybe eat some more brownies.
