shit, i had this all typed out and it went away....grrrrr...

well my pretties, it's that time of year again. time to decorate for christmas. this is a pure d pain in my ass. something that should take a few hours tops, usually takes longer.

it started out all well and good. the iceback, a morning person, was thrilled that the southern bell, a vampire, had drug her ass out of bed by eight. the boy and the girl were going to be gone all day, so we were going to get the basics done so all they'd have to do when they came home was decorate the tree. well, the boy doesn't like to decorate anymore, he never really did, but he said he'd hang out with us while we did.

the girl had wanted a live tree this year, but i reminded her how much i hated to string the lights(somehow, over the years, this has become my job). years ago we had a live tree, which shriveled up to a dry and painful mess. it was so prickly, that we left it sitting in our living room until March when we finally dragged it, lights and all, out to the garbage. so instead, she bought a pre-lit tree.

mr. organization--gotta have a staging area--pulled all the boxes from storage so we could start sorting inside and outside decorations.

since we had a spiffy new tree, mark decided we'd put the older, smaller tree in the front window for the dog. yep, the dog has his own tree and i once again had to string lights.

so i did the front tree and the banister. magically, all the lights we'd tried out of the storage had worked, until we started stringing them. then all of a sudden, half the strands wouldn't work, including the outside icicles.

ho ho ho, merry fucking christmas. the yelling, tantrum throwing, pouting began and i reminded mark in my most sarcastic voice "this is why i love christmas".

we scraped together some bucks and walked in the rain to eckard's for new icicles and a new box of blue balls(oops, the boys insists i call them blue ornaments because blue balls makes him laugh).

after more than five hours, we finally had things done and eventually, the kids came home and the girl hung ornaments. i usually go back behind her and rearrange some of them, cuz i'm a picky picky bitch.

actually, i blame my mom. years ago she started this "designer tree" thing. her tree was done in white lights with all silver decorations. even her presents were wrapped in all silver(foil) paper with her favorite color, mauve, as an accent. mark liked it so much, that he insisted we do the same.

mom then decided to do an all mauve and silver tree. how she found mauve lights i'll never know. however, it is quite stunning when completed.

we kept an all silver tree for years, but a few years ago decided to add our own color. so we picked blue...blue ornaments and ribbon, with silver ornaments. likewise the presents all have to be done in blue or silver paper with blue or silver bows. right now i'm a little distressed because my blue ornaments aren't quite the same blue as my ribbon. i bought three rolls of the ribbon and the first two rolls has a kind of irredescent quality(which matches the ornaments), but the last roll wasn't like that. it's drving me friggin crazy. CRAZY, i tell you.

and leave it to mark's mom and her cheap ass crappy bargain wrapping paper to fuck with my color scheme. i've been know to rewrap her presents or hide them so they don't clash. she poo-poos my designer tree, but what do you expect from a woman who drags an old couch onto her front lawn for the family to hang out on.

see? it's all too much for me. maybe it's because i have too much freakin time on my hands, or maybe it's my mother's passing on of her high-falutin taste.

christmas stresses me out, and i haven't even started shopping. whoa, that'll be fun, yeah?

sigh