Yang Girly Girl

Every Christmas, we haul in the Christmas Boxes from the garage, in the hopes that they contain Christmas stuff.  Most years they do.  This year, they did not.

I had forgotten that I was out of town last year when the Christmas décor was taken down and packed away.  I had the utmost trust in my husband to put the ornaments, wreaths garlands, and lights in their designated boxes.  While I appreciate his sedulous efforts, I had no idea how the entire process could turn apocalyptic.

It probably started with whatever road racing was on SPEED TV during the takedown. 

All I know is that when I opened the boxes this year, there were at least half a dozen ornaments in every Christmas box.  There are probably many still in the garage, cuddling a set of jumper cables and the electric drill, something that we haven’t seen since last Christmas.   At this point, I’m convinced we own several of them.  The same goes for Christmas lights, extension cords, and we also have duct tape in every color of the rainbow, but we can’t find that either.  I’m sure they reside in the labyrinth of bins that is our garage.

Then there are the multiple cans of WD-40, mostly all half or three quarters full.  I guess I’ll have to hang those on the tree since I’m missing so many ornaments. 

The obvious solution, of course, is to buy more extension cords, lights, and I’m sure my husband wouldn’t mind making another annual trek to Home Depot for yet another freaking power drill and who knows how many more cans of WD-40.  But this is the year to stop the madness and either find what we have or do without.  McGuyver it!

Honestly folks, I have enough Christmas lights to decorate the entire neighborhood, in classic Griswold fashion, enough extension cords to circle the planet, and enough power drills to impress any Chilean miner.  But, where are they?  The above named items, not the miners.  We know where the miners are, thank God.

One of my favorite items of décor is the Christmas Village, little houses and stores, lambent in the twilight, a replica of turn of the century New England, but I can’t find all of it.  Now, the Christmas village display is nothing more than three boys on a sled.  Too bad they have to spend their Christmas in a darkened and foreboding railroad station. 

For all you Christmas organizers, this is probably the seediest, most insipid, set of circumstances to your Christmas decorating nirvana. 

We decided to make up for our loss with purchasing a beautiful, evergreen garland to grace our porch and stoop.  In Seattle, we normally get gentle rains, sometimes a drizzle, but nothing incapacitating.  All was well when we brought the garland home.  Within 10 minutes, gale winds of 50 mph raged, and slanted torrential rains soon drove us indoors.  We put the garland up all right.  The only problem was that the porch looked like my grandmother’s chest, with its two droopy swags, and the stoop looked like the evil tree from Poltergeist.  With the lighted windows, the Amityville Horror house can’t hold a candle to ours.  

Maybe it would have been better to accept defeat and buy more stuff.   Maybe I should get over it and accept the McGuyver Christmas, complete with scary stoop, senior porn, and village orphans. 

Maybe we should have gone to Mazatlan.

Merry Christmas, and may you find all your STUFF this year.