In Memory of a Dead Tree

It’s done. We’ve taken down the tree.  This is not because Husband and I are giant Scrooges - so totally sick of Christmas that we couldn’t stand the sight of it for another second – it’s because it was dead.

Well, we made all kinds of mistakes with the tree. We didn’t have the man at the tree lot cut off a bit of the trunk. We added sugar to the water and, when the water went stagnant and vomit smelling and we had to siphon it out with a turkey baster, we added Clorox to the new water solution. Maybe that last part wasn’t so bad – I googled that solution and all accounts make it sound like a real thing you can do to a tree – but the first two lead to a crispy, hard, pieces-falling-off thing by Christmas Eve. We left it up until the day after, just to keep in the holiday spirit, but it was pretty pathetic looking by the time we snipped of every branch and took the bags to the curb.

So Christmas is over. It was a weird kind of long/short this year. Short in that I didn’t feel like there were enough weekends to celebrate and wished I could have jammed in a couple more holiday related activities, but long in that we had started listening to Christmas music BEFORE THANKSGIVING. It’s hard to want to sing along with White Christmas when you’ve heard it approximately nine hundred thousand times. Radio stations please learn: there is a finite amount of Christmas music. It gets worn out fast.

I can’t believe it’s already the New Year. It’s 2012, the end of the world year and all that. There are a lot of people out there starting to make resolutions and such. I don’t like to do those; I always break them. But I do have a to-do list a mile long and losing weight is on that list. In fact, it’s likely that Husband and I will be a part of the New Year’s Resolution gym crowd. I have twenty-five extra pounds hanging around like those damn Christmas cookies at the office and I would like to lose at least twenty of them.  Other things on my to-do list:

• Get a new pair of glasses. I am growing blinder by the day.

• Go to an allergist to confirm what exactly is making my whole body itch in that skin crawling, uncontrollable kind of way. I suspect peanuts but I would like to be sure.

• See a chiropractor about my fucked up back. Since we bought the new bed it’s been a million times better, but I am still ruined for standing for long periods of time. That is a silly thing for a person who is not yet thirty.

• Start paying off my credit card debt. This is contingent on when Husband gets a job, of course.

• Finish the first draft of my book and start getting feedback (and cleaning it up so it can be all pretty for the agents). I had a full head of steam back in November when I was doing the whole Novel Writing Month thing and then the holidays happened and guests arrived and parties were had and I’ll be damned if I squeezed in more than 2,000 words.  I really do foresee finishing and publishing this book, I just have to keep the motivation behind it. Perhaps I should have a January edition of National Novel Writing Month? Possibly.

There are a ton of little things on my life’s to-do list that I would love to get time for this year such as volunteering at a local stable so I can learn how to ride horses, picking up guitar again (and actually learning how to play it this time), selling some of my odd pieces of photography, learning how to better use my digital camera and getting back into sketching. I come up with new things every single day that I wish I had the combination of time and money for - which is precisely the reason I don’t keep resolutions very well.  There is always a distinct possibility that I am going to come up with something new tomorrow that will take a bigger priority in my life. While I am fully aware that this is not how goal setting works, this is just how I roll.

According to Husband, during my day here at work our living room has been completely cleaned and disinfected from Christmas. (He even dusted - I have to keep him!) It is officially over, and we can move onto the next, better part of the holidays: the end.  Maybe next year we’ll be able to keep the tree alive through New Years. How’s that for a resolution?!