On the third day of Christmas (decorating) her dang back said to her ...
It’s over. Now all that’s left is for me to continue applying Icy Hot to my back and taking a regimen of ibuprofen so I can soon walk, perhaps even bend over, without uttering a profanity.
If you’re worried I was in some sort of accident: fear not. I’m just recovering from decorating for Christmas. For me holiday decor is my Olympics. A decathlon of sorts where for three solid days I lug bin after bin out of my basement and begin the transformation from holiday drab to fab.
For years I have divided my decorating into three separate phases. Phase one begins with getting the Christmas tree and decorating it.
I usually like to get the tree bright and early the day after Thanksgiving. This year, due to a University of Texas football game, we had to delay our family outing to select a tree until 3 p.m., thus setting my decorating schedule back h-o-u-r-s.
That wasn’t the worst of it. UT lost or, according to my husband, “gave the game away” to Iowa State and he was in a mood that wasn’t the least bit festive.
I, totally full of the Christmas spirit, suggested that he might want to pick a new Big 12 team to root for. Perhaps even Iowa State because they haven’t been to a conference championship since 1912. So, it would be fun (historic even) to see them win.
This suggestion was met with a glare that still haunts me. It also made the ride to select a tree so lacking in holiday joy not even the Cheetah Girls Christmas CD from 2005 featuring the classic “Marshmallow World” could serve as a mood booster.
Luckily it didn’t impact our quest for the perfect noble fir. We found one quickly and then I moved on to perusing wreaths. Shortly after that I discovered my husband had gone MIA. I sent my son to look for him and he reported back “that dad was walking off the game.”
Seriously, I wanted to throw a 20-inch Fraser fir wreath at my husband. Who allows football to usurp holiday joy?
The next day I was barely ambulatory and a tad queasy after staying up till 2 a.m. to finish decorating the tree while subsisting on Pepperidge Farm cookies and Diet Coke. But I rallied and began phase two: exterior illumination.
This is where I almost lost my Christmas spirit. None, and I mean none, of the lights in my yards and yards of outdoor holiday garland worked. Granted they were more than a decade old, but still I felt like my holly jolly had been kicked to the curb.
It didn’t help that I also had a slight memory of these lights going out last year right before I was going to take them down. But instead of removing the lights from the garland I just shoved them back in a bin.
As I was forced to cut hundreds of lights off with scissors so I could clear the way for new lights, I wanted to travel back in time and punch myself in the face.
It was so bad I had to break open a fresh bag of peppermint cookies to make it through that perilous journey.
Fortunately phase three — assorted interior decor not of a Christmas tree nature — was less eventful but not without peril. I couldn’t find one of my holiday bins and was at DEFCON 1 for a nervous collapse.
Days later all is well — sort of. I’m still sore from lugging bins and falling off a ladder. (To be clear it was a step stool but still, ouch.) My hope is I’ll be able to climb stairs without cursing very soon.
Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs, on Twitter at @snarkynsuburbs on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.
This story was originally published December 8, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "On the third day of Christmas (decorating) her dang back said to her ...."