The other day, on a whim, I’d wrapped up a lesson with my piano teacher and found some musical instrument ornaments for sale. I’d seen them before, but couldn’t justify buying them. Hell, I didn’t even have a tree up or anything, and was about to just shrug off the whole thing.

But I couldn’t help it–they looked so cool and my tree was small enough (and I had so few colored balls to hang on it), that the instruments could fit on there quite nicely and fill the gaps.

So, I got a few…then got a few more online.

Sheesh, I really gotta stop spending money.

But I went ahead and dug out the tree when I got home from work yesterday afternoon. I cleared off one of my end tables (figured that would be the best place) and moved it to the outlet. My tree’s only four feet tall, which is good because it can go on a table without hitting the ceiling and the dogs can’t knock it over…I hope.

At least I have no overactive elves living with me.

A year makes you forget a lot, especially the most annoying aspect of the tree–decorating it. More than that, it’s the first step of the tree that I have to contend with and absolutely hate: straightening up the branches.

I’ve never been very good at doing that. I try to spread them out and make them look good, and then sometimes I end up making accidental bare spots that look awful, especially once you put the lights around and turn them on. Some of the holes show through mighty glaringly and you waste an hour trying to make them perfect.

That was the one thing that really sucked about having family around when doing the tree–the gaps were never really covered well enough to please them. It made me want to get frustrated and just say “fix it yourself.”

The response was always “you’re the one who wanted the tree up.”

And that was true. Nobody else seemed to care about it, especially when it was just me and dad and the occasional family member that would come around. I’m not even particularly sentimental for the holiday, but maybe it’s the experimenter in me that forces me to try each year.

Ugh. And it’s not just fanning out the branches and their spacing. It’s also the baubles of different colors, and trying to space them out just enough to not end up with two of the same right next to each other because then it irritates you when you see it.

Yeah, I’m one of those people who can’t let that alone… much…at least not when it’s my tree.

Ugh, you couldn’t PAY me to do tinsel. Takes months to get that crap off the furniture and floor.

But now that I’m sitting here, looking over at it, there’s a lot of blank space on the bottom half of the tree, where the gaps between the layers are most noticeable… I’m almost itching to go over there and make some corrections. On the other hand, I can see the lights much better in that part, and I can figure out where some of those instrument ornaments are going to go.

My drum kit one didn’t have a hook on it (or a hole for one, though I could do a wrap-around the connector bar) or a ribbon or string loop like the others did. But that really doesn’t bother me much. I just tucked it into the branches on a sturdy and thick section where it won’t fall down and bust, high enough it can’t dislodge.

I guess I’ve done the last of my major Christmas decorations for quite some time… unless I go to sleep and decide I ought to go ahead and light up my deck as well. I should’ve tackled that a week ago, but the weather was lousy and I wasn’t gonna do it Thanksgiving weekend.

Well, I’m gonna sleep this headache off and wake up to a messy as all hell house that I just have to deal with (Sunday bloody Sunday indeed). At least where the tree is looks nice and clean. I just have to get that cleanliness everywhere else, too!

That’s what I want for Christmas–Mary Poppins to come over and teach me some cleaning spells (I love the fan theory that she’s a Hogwarts graduate).