Friday, November 24, 2006

It's beginning to look a lot like... well, no, it's not really...

It occured to me yesterday that I may have been born without the need-to-decorate-for-the-holidays gene.

I've tried, I've made attempts, I've purchased half-price decorations in after-holiday clearance sales, fully intending to make my home a winter wonderland the next year. Sometimes I even get ambitious and start putting up tinsel and the like, but I never go all the way, and when the decorations that I have half-heartedly put up start to fall down or look raggedy, I never get around to fixing them.

In fact, to be completely honest, I don't even really like sending out Christmas cards or festively wrapping presents. It's not that I'm anti-holiday, I like looking at tasteful decorations and even hearing the occasional carol (provided it's not sung by Clay Aiken or Christina Aguilera) it's just that I think my time is better spent on other stuff, like... staring at my computer screen and wishing I could get inspired or rearranging my junk drawer.

Never before has my need-to-decorate-for-the-holidays gene-deficiency made me feel inadequate - I figure, it's just not my thing - I've got lots of other good qualities, like cooking yummy things and having fun at the expense of others - but yesterday, I acutely felt that missing part of my DNA.

My pal, the Halloween Candy Nazi, invited me over to her house so our kids could hang out together and so we could have pina coladas (woo-hoo, mid-day drinking) and gab.

When I got there, I found the front yard fully decorated for the holiday - gone were the fall/harvest/Thanksgiving decorations that had replaced the Halloween decorations on November 1st, in their place were enough lights to illuminate a small South American village hung over a family of light-up reindeers and a life-sized Santa statue. I found her husband in the living room surrounded by a forest of plastic evergreen limbs cursing the facts that the movers had put all 3 (three!!!) of their trees in one box.

Then I spent the next two to three hours helping to cleanse the house of all harvest-related merchandise (including, but not limited to ceramic pumpkins, pilgrim salt and pepper shakers and a turkey apron) and replacing it with holiday merchandise (including, but not limited to a Santa hand soap dispenser, a gingerbread man cookie jar and a snow man hot chocolate dispenser). For her it was effortless to rearrange almost everything in her house to reflect the changing season.

Man, I hate it when my inadequecies are highlighted... although copious amounts of alcohol definitely went a long way towards making me feel better.

Labels: suzy fucking homemaker