It’s still looking a lot like Christmas here at my house. No, there isn’t magic filling the air and the morning paper isn’t bursting with ads, but the mantle is still sporting its spray of artificial greenery and the stockings are still hung with no hope of St. Nick’s imminent arrival. The tree stands by the front windows, looking as pretty as the day we set it up and we still turn the lights on every evening to enjoy its beauty.
Why could this be? Are we waiting for the return of a deployed family member, keeping things just so to celebrate later on? No. Have we been struck down by the flu as we were years ago and have been physically unable to stand long enough to bring in the boxes and take the holiday stuff down and repack it? No. Perhaps we are turning into the kind of people who keep their lights up all year round because we’re just too lazy to get to it. Nope. What’s really going on is that we’ve just been so busy since the New Year began that we haven’t had a moment we’ve cared to care about packing it all up!
In fact, the reason we only have a mantle to clear and a tree to dismantle is because I never got as far as putting any decorations anywhere else in the house! Silly me; I thought by putting out less would make for faster clean-up. Somehow it hasn’t turned out that way and honestly, I don’t care!
Last Saturday Dave and I managed to clean the whole house, top to bottom, put away all the gifts, vacuumed up piles of cat hair and dusted every possible surface. The kitchen and all three bathrooms were deep cleaned until they downright sparkled. The only thing we didn’t get to was the Christmas decorations. Oh well, you can’t have everything.