Kringle, Kringle, Kringle

Woke up with aching shoulders and arms from trying to keep warm last night without flipping the comforter over me. Couldn't stop for that nonsense; had things to do and places to go. Ate breakfast, then was off to the house of "the Prim Lady," who is retiring from the business and selling off everything this weekend. There was quite a little clot of ladies there, all telling her how much they will miss her. Her husband was outside talking to some of the customers and showing off their backyard, which overlooks the Indian Hills Country Club golf course. They have a swell house: the part where she sells out of is a covered, outdoor patio and a little downstairs room with a bath, and also the garage. She was also selling off some antique furniture. Nowhere to put it, and what I wanted most was the old icebox like my grandpa had in his cellar, but that wasn't for sale anyway.

I got a few things for me, and a few things for gifts, and told her I'd miss her and showed her the picture of the little tree I got out of her bargain bin a few years ago which I have decorated with pipe-cleaner wreaths and circles, and discount ornaments, and it looks really cute at work.

Next I needed to post my Christmas cards and half of my packages (the others weren't packaged yet), but I also needed a "pit stop." Cobb County public building across the street to the rescue! Gee, if I had to go to the tag office [license plates], I'd come here. There were two people in line, instead of the line out the door at the office on South Cobb Drive.

Got through the post office pretty painlessly, although it hacks me off that you can't buy stamps in any quantity less than twenty anymore. I wanted to buy just four Hanukkah stamps, but they wouldn't let me.

Checked out a [mumble] store for a gift, then stopped by Trader Joe's to replenish chicken salad and chicken sausage, and also bought a variety of Christmas treats for desserts that should last us through December. No more almond bark, though! And no pumpkin tarts! {Tried just one of the honey mints tonight; three ingredients: mint-flavored honey centers covered in dark chocolate. Oh...my! Very subtle mint taste at first, with no grainy sugary mint feel, and a nice mint aftertaste.)

Was going to stop at a hardware store or a Walmart on the way home for replacement Christmas light bulbs, but the roads were choked with Christmas shoppers, so I ended up just stopping at Walgreens and buying a new string. The library tree has at least seven lights out, most of them blue for some strange reason!

I got home and had a bit of something for lunch, then went downstairs. In just a little while I had the silver airplane tree up and decorated, placing the heavier, larger planes on the top of the bookcase next to the tree. Then I attacked the problem of the new tree. Yes, we have a new tree. It's four feet tall, black and prelighted with white bulbs and is what we are supposed to use for our new "space" tree (fiction and fact). Except there's no space for the space tree. I toyed with putting it in the spare room, but...no.

What I did think of was doing it as a wall tree (or espalier tree, whatever). So I decanted it and moved the all the branches to one side and...you know, I could do this. I took down the Ken Jenkins print in front of the laundry room and hoisted the black tree up using two sets of tinsel cord, using the mounts for the print. Then I decorated it with all our spacecraft and space-related ornaments, the larger ones like Freedom 7 and the moon buggy first, and then the smaller ones like Spock and Robby the Robot, and finally the small ones like the spaceship miniatures that used to be on the foyer tree. Then I added the silver star "drops" I bought at Garden Ridge, added the tinsel star that is usually hung over the airplane tree (replaced the star with the small wreath that was on the laundry room door, replacing that one with an even smaller red-and-green wreath I'd bought at Garden Ridge) at the top, and then took a wide strip of some gold wrapping paper and cut icicle-like triangles at the bottom edge. This I wound around the big plastic lump at the base of the tree where the tree-stand feet would have gone, to simulate flames. I finished just as James came home and told him to come in through the garage.

I think he likes it. And he got the "flames" right away, so I did it right. :-)

China Palace had stuck a delivery menu in our mailbox, so we tried them for supper. Rather bland, I thought.

Then, with determination and the new string of lights in hand, I went downstairs and denuded the library tree of lights and applied the new. Now, on my list of things I love to do, putting lights on a Christmas tree is right down there with watching baseball and scrubbing out the shower compartment. But this pretty much went on correctly the first time. By the time James came down to keep me company, I was on my way to overloading the poor tree with all our literary-related ornaments, from the specific Hallmark (and other) ornaments like Bonnie Blue and Rhett Butler and Dorothy Gale and Harry Potter to animals and people representing books taken from bins of figures at Michaels or Richard's Variety Store: Robin Hood and Long John Silver and Merlin and Black Beauty and Lassie and Pongo, and more. Even Hazel from Watership Down. :-) Last went on the bead garlands.

Then I vacuumed up the library and came upstairs. I'm going to put the woodland tree in the spare room.

But meantime I wrapped the other three gifts that needed to go out. I was remiss this year and forgot to save Amazon boxes, with the result that one of my gifts will need to be shipped in two parts. What fun. But that's all ready to go to the post awful tomorrow.

It wasn't until eleven o'clock that I sat down to do my annual December 7 viewing of The Waltons' Pearl Harbor episode, "Day of Infamy." When Grandma hears that first radio report about the attack, the hair on my arms still stands up.