ok, i did try to post last week, last monday, three times, and journalscape rejected every one of 'em. so here i am, playing catch up.

last weekend we did the decorating thing. ugh, what a pain in the ass that is, and just seals my opinion that christmas sucks.

the southern bell managed to pull her ass out of bed before 8 am. a small miracle which thrilled the morning person iceback. i'm more of a vampire. but just because i'm outta bed, doesn't mean i'm rip roarin ready to go. it usually takes a coke, several smokes and an energy drink.

the kids were going to be gone all day. yay, my son finally got a job with his auntie c(c). and unbelieveably, he loves it. made $18 in tips on three tables his first day. we're so freakin happy. plus, the added perk is we get the house to ourselves sat and suns...double yay.

so anyhow, we pull out all the crap, go over all the lights. the tree lights work when we initially plug them in. now sis in law(auntie c(c))had bought a pre-lit tree cuz she knew how much i hate, i mean HATE, stringing lights and that always ends up my job. but since we still had a smaller tree, the iceback decides the dog, yep, that's right, the dog needed his own tree in the kitchen's bay window. so there i was stringing fucking lights again. only by the time i got to doing that, only half the string would light up.

meanwhile, the iceback had pulled out all his icicle lights and of course, he didn't have enough that worked. next came the pouting, shouting and throwing...merry fucking christmas. so i scraped together a few bucks and we walked in the rain to eckerd's and bought some lights and ornaments. peace and calm were once again restored.

i did the banister, mantel, and our main tree, minus the ornaments. the girl loves to decorate so i left that for her. but truth be told, i'm picky as hell and even after she does it, i go back and rearrange several of them. so shoot me.

now i have what we call a designer tree. it started with my mom. several years ago, once the kids were out of the house, she chunked all our old stuff and bought new. she decorated her tree in white and silver. all silver ornaments, ribbons, bows, tinsel, with white lights and white doves. even the presents were done in silver wrap with white accents. it was really quite pretty and spectacular.

mark, who wishes his mom was half the mom mine is, loved it, so when she decided to add color to her scheme(mauve and how the hell she found mauve colored lights i'll never know) she gave us a lot of her old stuff. mom began doing her tree in mauve and silver, even the presents wrapped in shiny mauve paper with silver accents.

mark's mom poo-pooed our designer tree, saying it wasn't very christmasy. so every year, she spoils my look by finding the cheapest, bargain basement, crappy wrapping paper for her presents which go under our tree. but really, i mean, what do you expect from a woman who drags her old couch onto the front yard for the family to hang out on?

anyhow, in the last few years, we've also added color. blue. so i have silver ornaments, tinsel, bows with blue ornaments and ribbon. we did use blue lights until this year when we got the pre-lit one. now the ribbon is driving me bonkers. several years ago i bought three rolls of the same ribbon, or so i thought. the first two rolls have a kind of irredescent look to them, but the last roll, the blue is lighter and looks kind of satiny. i drape three strands from the top bow down to the bottom of the tree. this new ribbon doesn't match the blue of the ornaments and i'm freakin losing it. the iceback and the kids think it looks great, but i know. i know. i can be so anal i tell you.

and of course, mother from hell has sent her presents in crappy wrapping paper, which means, we have to wrap over them in mine. yes, i do that and i'm not ashamed to admit it.

thank god it doesn't take near as long to de-decorate as it does to decorate. it seems every year, a two hour job takes us all freakin day.

ok, that's it. merry christmas, ya'll.