Light

I was just catching up on blogs and commenting and mentioned on Elisabeth's post that I always feel unsettled the week of the time change (so fun that the disastrous U.S. election AND the time change took place on the same week in November, the unkindest month, yeah, I said it T.S. Eliot, screw you). Even when it's the 'good' time change, where theoretically we get an extra hour of sleep. I have been turning on all the twinkly lights possible as soon as it gets dark (at like two in the afternoon). I wasn't sure I was going to post tonight, but then I thought, maybe a little post about light.

One of the things I did while I was cleaning and organizing earlier this fall (lamentably, I have lost my decluttering mojo, and hoping it will come back), was to untangle the fairy lights that are on the little part wall between our kitchen and dining room. Because I am who I am, when I first got them I put them up in a kind of 'artful' tangle, and figured I'd straighten them out later. Then I thought it didn't really matter that they were tangled because you could see the lights more than the string.

But while Matt was away and I was trying to make things a little less chaotic, I took them down and carefully untangled them and draped them in a more orderly fashion, which I have been finding soothing.

I also have some branches with fairy lights that sit in a giant wood vase I got in the market. I hadn't been plugging them in because I had trouble getting the plug into the outlet on the back of the little table and I kept feeling like I was going to knock something over. Then I decided this was dumb, so I took everything off the table so I could tilt it forward and familiarize myself with how the outlet was oriented, which would theoretically make it easier to plug it in using muscle memory once I did it a few times.

So far so good.

Matt's going to be away the first two weeks of December, which makes me want to cry a little bit. I always feel so exhausted when he's away through most of the Christmas prep, which doesn't make a whole lot of sense since I do most of it anyway (because I work the least). One thing we have decided is that we will finally buy an artificial tree.

When the kids were home we would always go buy a real tree. We didn't go out in the woods to cut one down or anything (play to your strength), but we went to the same place we bought our fruit and vegetables all summer and it was a nice tradition. Once we got a vehicle with a sun roof, the kids would have fun opening and closing the sun roof to check on the tree. One year Eve kept saying "open up... hi, tree!" until she said "open up.... um, Dad?" (it hadn't fallen off, just shifted so she couldn't see it, but it was a funny moment).

But the kids are away now, and even before they left it was getting harder to find a good time to go buy it. And real trees are expensive, and drop needles everywhere, and don't hold ornaments as well, and it's a pain to get the lights on (well, not for me personally, I just take out the box that says 'lights' and wave a hand airily in Matt's direction). Zarah has a prelit tree that toggles between white lights and coloured, which I covet, because I love white lights but sort of think that coloured are more Christmassy.

Now one can be mine!

I will be sad, of course, because it's another end of an era, and too many stupid eras keep ending, and we have many cherished memories of making Matt pick out the tree and then mocking the inevitably wonky trees he ended up buying ("keep turning it until we find a better side. No, keep turning. Wait, those ARE all the sides? Oh dear").

We thought that left bottom branch would eventually relax. It did not. 

But the time has come, and I will accept it like I always do - grumpily, with loud bad grace. 

Now I am going to bed to read by the light of the Saje Starry Skies diffuser I bought myself for Christmas three years ago and forgot about  until two years ago. It's a crappy diffuser as it turns out, but a really nice night light.