(Sleep) Walking in a Winter Wonderlaaand!

In that time-honored American tradition, roundabout our way Christmas merchandice and decorations have been appearing since, oh, September/October (thank you, Costco.) Usually its only been an isle or two and easy enough to avoid, but - of course - as soon as Thanksgiving looms, lights start twinkling and maniacs are driving home with trees on their roofs (you might say awful arbor automobile aerodynamics.)

All alliteration aside, this has caused a bit of a (snow) ball balancing act around here. On one hand, to a 4 year old, this is the excitement of the holidays. "Can we go home and get out or decorations? Can we get a tree? A big tree? Like that one? (Points to 20' flocked nightmare.) And that? Can we get one of those? (inflatable elf/reindeer porn.)" On the other hand, apparantly I'm now a crotchety old mom who thinks that Christmas should get started around, oh, Christmastime and felt like her heart was two sizes too small everytime she said 'no' to her kid. Oh, did I accidentally squash your sugarplum fairy when I dropped my bag full of coal on him -- 800 times? How clumsy of me!

Something needed to be done, so Mags and I sat down and picked a date when we would dig through the shed and find our meager box of decorations. That night was last night. First we had to go to the store and buy a flashlight, but soon we were in the cruel cold of evening (40') looking for our cardboad Christmas miracle. Victoriously we rode home through the snow under a fur blanket in our illuminated carriage singing carols ("Don't step in the mud puddle! Are you even wearing pants?!?") Mags dove head first into the box, launching stockings and ornaments and snarled lights everywhere. This went on for about 20 minutes before I realized why I was struggling so with the whole messy process.

We had no tree.

Ooops! Little detail we...sort of...over...looked...goddamit, are we really going to have to go back out and get a tree now that we've covered the floor with loose ornament hooks? F*ck! Cue second Christmas miracle, when Husband ran into a friend at the grocery store who offered us the use of a mid-size fake tree for the holidays. Perfect! We whipped that baby together in no time flat, and soon Mags was bedecking our halls (and the tree) with ornaments and... spoonfulls of shells she's collected from our southerly sailing sojurn stopped sadly this Sunday (cruise to Mexico.) Literally, there are shells balanced on the tree branches. This should be interesting.

The ornaments were not all hung, the boxes are still littering the living room, and nary a card has been signed or addressed yet. Overall our holiday season is creaking to life with the slow, painful sound of an old 33 RPM Christmas album started with the needle in place before revolving at full speed. Swimming through virtual eggnog, we are. But we've still got time. The 12 days don't start until after Christmas, rigt?