Christmas Arrives
After a morning spent sweeping the house for books, toys, games, and clothes that we don’t need or want any more, we visited one of the many charity shops in town to donate a number of huge bags. I would love to say we studiously chose the charity based on principles, beliefs, or some other worthy method. We chose whichever shop we could park nearest to.
The reason for clearing out so much stuff? Christmas has finally arrived in our house. After leaving the charity shop we drove across the nearby countryside to a farm that grows and sells Christmas Trees. After several years using an old artificial tree – the one I originally bought for my apartment, twenty years ago – it’s something of a novelty having a “real” tree this year.
The public-facing part of the farm consisted of a warehouse full of trees of various shapes and sizes, and an adjoining shop filled to the gunnels with quite wonderful decorations. While wandering around looking at the various Victorian themed displays, I wondered if the farm does something else for the rest of the year, or if all of their profits happen in December?
I’ve had very little to do with decorating the tree. While the living room was re-arranged by my other half and younger daughters, I walked into town with Miss 19 in search of a few bottles of something nice to drink. And that’s why I’m going to have a headache in the morning. I’ve drunk half a bottle of supermarket-own-brand Sherry this evening.
At some point over the next few days I need to start wrapping presents. My other half’s presents (that have arrived) are in boxes under the desk in the junk room. We haven’t bought each other much, so there’s not much to wrap up – it’s just one of those jobs that inevitably gets put off and put off, isn’t it. We all know that we’ll end up sitting up until 2am on Christmas Eve, wrapping stuff.
Anyway. Christmas has arrived in our house. The tree is up, and decorated. I’m guessing I’ll be tasked with taking all the decoration boxes back up to the attic in the morning. I’m suppose to be going for a run with our eldest too. Fingers crossed she gets out of bed before lunchtime.