Christmas Decorating is Becoming a Disaster

By:

The Dude on the Right
Okay, so this, my next Blog, isn’t about a scientific study about unit size,
hopefully for you dudettes, it will be the next, but I just wanted to lament
about my Christmas decorating and how it isn’t going too well so far. 

My Christmas decorating used to be the easiest thing in the world, usually
taking about 15 minutes. It started probably about six years ago, when I finally
broke down and bought a tree. Now, me, being the generally lazy decorator that I
am, of course bought a tree with lights pre-installed. I had ornaments thanks to
my Mom ordering me Hallmark ornaments for a number of years, and so, I moved one
of my end tables in front of the front room window, assembled the tree, put on
the ornaments, and even bought some Christmas tree skirting. Bamm, that first
time it took me about 60 minutes to go from opening the box to having a lit tree
complete with ornaments.

Christmas came and went that year, and as it went, I was faced with the crappy
task of packing away the ornaments, taking apart the tree, and in all honesty,
this seemed like it would take longer than the assembly. But then a moment of
genius occurred to me. I had a spare bedroom upstairs, the tree wasn’t that
heavy (it’s only a 4 1/2 foot fake tree), so I said to myself, "Self, why don’t
you just carry the tree upstairs, ornaments and all, throw an old bed sheet over
it, and then next year, all you have to do is move the end table, carry the tree
down the stairs, and you’d be done?" And so, for years, that is exactly what I
did. I’d get back from the Old Country after Thanksgiving, move my end table, go
upstairs and remove the bed sheet, carry down my decorated tree, and
"Voilà!" , about 15 minutes
from start to finish, my Christmas decorating was done. I was always so proud of
the time it took me to decorate that whenever I was in a conversation about how
long it would take someone to deck their halls, and had to regale those present
with my genius.

Then, visiting a friend of mine, I was shamed, at least in my head, at the
total lameness of my Christmas decorating. At her house they had this giant
village built, in their basement, that stretched along one wall and halfway
along another, and as proud as I was that my decorating only took 15 minutes, in
my head I decided something more needed to be done. So, after Christmas was
over, I saw an ad that the village houses and props were 75% off, so it started. 
I bought a couple of houses, a lighthouse, and the next year, my decorating
started to get more complicated. This was a few years ago. Then I added a
ski-lift, an old train set, and things got a little worse, although not as bad
as this year. In the previous year I sort of had the train set halfway done as I
didn’t have the width to make the full loop. It looked alright, but the train
didn’t work. So, this year, I calculated all of the space needed, set up the
plywood, and started to get to work. This is where things really started to go
wrong. First mistake, bringing down my ornamented Christmas tree and plopping it
on the plywood first. Yup, there was my tree, standing proud, only now I needed
to install the train track.

No biggy, until, well, sprawled along the plywood trying to get the
thumbtacks put in to secure the train track, my svelte body under the tree,
well, wouldn’t you know it, I lifted my back just a little too much, and then
the tree started to tumble, I caught the tree, but not before 90% of the
ornaments decided to vacate their place on the tree and onto the floor.

Great, my decorating is now starting to go horribly wrong, now I’ve got to
re-ornamentate the tree, and the angel on the top of the tree, while taking her
tumble, well she lost her wings.

But that wasn’t all.

Nope, finally settling into the fact my decorating was getting slightly more
entailed than I planned it to be, I continued laying the train track, only to
quickly realize that I didn’t have enough track connectors. So much for getting
my decorating done on that night. So, decorating not finished, I go to bed, wake
up the next day, head to the hobby store, get more track connectors, and I’m
psyched that "Yes, I can finally finish this Christmas decorating crap this
evening, it will be great, the train will work, and it will officialy be the
Holiday Season in the dude-pad." Evening comes, and begin decorating again, and
I thought I would be creative with the train by kinda loopy-looping it rather
than just having a normal oval, except there was one other problem – I
miscalculated the amount of track needed. Yup, there I was, most of the track
tacked down, getting towards at least finishing the train, when, low and behold,
I was one track short. One freakin’ track short.

I’ve already spent way to much time on this project, I’ve got a tree with
only a few ornaments left on it, I’m sure I need more fake snow, and I need ONE
PIECE OF TRACK THAT I COULD HAVE BOUGHT AT THE HOBBY STORE EARLIER IN THE DAY
BUT NOW THE STORE IS CLOSED.

I thought of just leaving my decorating as is, tree half done, train not
finished, ski-lift still in its box, especially since I rarely entertain, so who
is going to see it anyway, and wouldn’t it be a funnier story if I had people
over with my "not done" decorating, but, after this blog, I’m going back to
work. I decided I will untack some of the train track, remove one piece,
re-assemble the train, so hopefully I can at least get the train going. Then
it’s time to unpack my village, get the skiers skiing and the boat boating, and
I can almost bet you by the end of the night, I will have one last problem, not
enough fake snow.

That’s it for this one! I’m The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!