One of my blog-buddies, John, commented about the fact that I already have Christmas lights up. Well, the truth is, I do, and I don’t.

I have my lights up on the outside of the house – the hedges, the front window, the trees in the curb strip. I don’t generally put ANY lights up this early, but we were gifted a couple days of dry weather over Thanksgiving weekend, and since the park around the block (the neighborhood park) is decked out, and we were asked to please try to have our own lights out early, as there is some kind of competition for niftiest neighborhood, or some such, I took the opportunity, and did the outside lights, most of them, that weekend.

Of course, I severely underestimated the amount of lights it would take, so I had to go back to Home Depot and get more, but now they’re ALL up.

Outside.

Inside’s another matter.
The room that will eventually be a library is still “box central” as we don’t have enough shelves for all our books. In fact, since we ditched the shakier shelves before we left California, we have even less shelving here than we did there, and we didn’t have enough then.

The dining room needs to have the carpet cleaned. I’m balancing on the edge of scheduling hell, because I need it done early enough to be able to have it in order before the parents arrive on the 18th, but late enough that the dogs won’t get in and leave lovely little dog-presents on the carpet.

The Tree and the ornamements, meanwhile, are sitting just outside the door from the garage into the laundry room, and when I say ‘just outside’ I mean that they don’t quite block the door. Still, I’m forced to see them, brush by them, every time I go that way, and that reminds me to call the carpet cleaners, and have them come. I’m thinking if I schedule things for the 15th, that will be about right, timing-wise. I hope.

In other parts of the house, the preparations continue in other ways. Today, I’m finishing the Christmas cards that were supposed to be done a week ago. My card list keeps expanding, though, so at some point I may have to face the fact that it’s an endless task, and doing ANY is just as good as doing ALL.

Or not.