I’m not sure what we’ve done in the days since Christmas, but I know that I’ve spent most of that time being cold. However, this summer when it was 126 degrees for three months straight, I vowed that I would never again complain about being cold. So I’m not complaining, it’s just an observation. And I guess we could turn on the heat, but I’m not a fan of the heat. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe and I’d rather just be cold.
Not that I’m complaining about being cold. It’s totally fine.
(I think the fact that I just talked about the temperature for that many consecutive sentences is a good indicator that I haven’t done much in the last few days. Maybe I should actually leave the house or something.)
I did manage to get the Christmas tree down on Sunday. Normally I’ll leave the tree up until around New Year’s and I definitely would have left this one up because it was my favorite tree EVER, but it had been dead for the better part of a week before Christmas and reached a level of dryness that I felt certain was going to lead to spontaneous combustion.
(I just used a lot of words to say I was afraid it was going to catch ON FIRE.)
(Also, P and his friend George used to take our Christmas tree out in the backyard after Christmas each year, put it in our fire pit and light that sucker up. I always thought it would be immediately engulfed in flames, but the trees would always just smoke and smolder. Highly anti-climatic.)
(I’m not sure that it was legal for us to try to burn our tree in the backyard but that’s before we had a child and needed to set a good example. Clearly we had a lot of time on our hands.)
(I kind of want to make fun of P for setting our Christmas tree on fire, but who was the idiot who stood outside to watch him do it?)
Anyway, I’d hoped to convince Caroline that taking down the Christmas decorations is as much fun as putting them up, but she didn’t buy it. I guess watching me attempt to untangle twelve strands of Christmas lights from a dead tree with needles of death didn’t create a persuasive argument. Especially when I debated just throwing the whole thing out, lights and all.
But, eventually, I got everything put away and all that’s left of Christmas are the battery-operated animals and a few random pine needles that embed themselves in my wool socks and impale my feet. Next year I’m wishing for a male six-plumed bird of paradise.
That may seem like a random wish until I tell you that we watched the Planet Earth movie that Santa brought and learned the male six-plumed bird of paradise is a meticulous cleaner. It’s how he woos his mate. Unfortunately for the bird in the movie, his lady friend was a no-show. I guess she didn’t want to go on a field trip with him even though his house was spotless. She obviously wasn’t a woman with a house covered in the remnants of Christmas.
So that’s what we’ve been doing around here. Taking down decorations and watching Disney documentaries on nature.
(And I don’t want to ruin the ending of Planet Earth, but it doesn’t turn out well for some of the animals. Of course given the way Disney is never afraid to knock off a parent for a good story, it’s hardly surprising.)
On a brighter note for animals everywhere, yesterday was rainy and COLD so Gulley and I took the kids to see Alvin and The Chipmunks “The Squeakquel”.
Spoiler Alert:
It all turns out okay for Alvin, Simon and Theodore.
Of course my ears started bleeding from listening to them halfway through the movie, but that’s not really important.
It’s not like I really need them, except for when I want to hear.