Estoy Nueces

I'm writing at a better time of day today. I've been up for a long while, Mark had to go to work, and I cleaned the kitchen and baked two loaves of banana nut bread because the bananas were soft and I did some "work" work, too. A sense of accomplishment is nice.

What I have not done is finish the Christmas letter that needs to be written, proofed, fitted to the paper, printed, signed, inserted, addressed, stamped, mailed... Nor have I decorated the tree. Mark brought one home yesterday and I'm glad. We used to go shopping for trees together but that became an excercise of my patience I prefer not to repeat. Mark shops for a Christmas tree like you might shop for a new car. He compares and examines and goes from lot to lot only to come back to the first two, three, four lots and re-examine and finally, satisfied, buys the tree. It's a tree! It will be in the house three weeks, tops, and it will be gone. My opinion is that I could cut down an arbor vitae from the closest cemetery and decorate it and that would be just as good a tree as the nicest Douglas fir. It's the ownership and decoration that make it special. So, anyway, after many years of that, we've come to this where Mark buys the tree, sets it up in the stand, and I am in charge of decorating.

We differ on decorating, also. I'm a colored lights person, he is a white lights person. Sure, these are decisions you never quite fully examine and explore before you marry or you think that you can work them out when the time comes, but they are BIG issues, let me tell you. We used to trade off years... one year an all white light tree (blah!) and one year and all colorful, exciting, Christmas-y Christmas tree. Pretty much we've compromised over the last few years and one strand or another goes up the middle of the tree and the other goes around the tree and it gives it a nice three-dimensional feel that we can both live with.

But I drink the eggnog (spiked) and decorate the tree and I haven't done it yet because the decorations and lights are still in the attic and I don't want to climb up there this morning. Maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, Sunday will be here soon.