I love the Christmas season with its’ sparkling lights, tree trimming, and wrapping of gifts. I just don’t love getting ‘help from other people – which clearly is not in the spirit of Christmas. It is technically a time for those you love to gather with glasses of wine and help you hang ornaments on your incredibly beautiful, lusciously green and robustly full Christmas tree. But screw that.
I am a Virgo, which makes me a slight perfectionist if being perfect means everything needs to be done according to Stella. I decided to get a real tree this year – and it is so incredibly beautiful. And incredibly against all Virgo rules. The things drops more pines that a Northern Boreal forest. What was I thinking? I can’t vacuum fast enough! I shleped it all the way from Ikea (which by-the-by has the best deal in town. $20 gets you a gorgeous tree, with that money going to Tree Canada AND you get a $20 coupon for Ikea! Hello! Other places are charging $60 for trees that would win Charlie Brown’s heart). Anyhoo, I stuffed the thing in my trunk (Volkswagens rule) and got it to my apartment ALL BY MYSELF. At this point I needed reinforcements in the forms of the Engineer, my girlfriend and her boyfriend who is also an engineer and best friends with my Engineer. Very cozy all around.
They were lovely and helpful, getting the tree up and trimmed so it stood just right. The boys had hockey so they left us girls to it – decorating my tree and drinking mulled wine. I thought this idea was great until she tried to wrap my lights around the tree – just wrap all helter skelter! The Engineer had done this to my mini-tree earlier (yes, I have two trees), which was appalling. Who are these people? You don’t just wrap your lights willy nilly – you have to place them in the branches so that they glitter like the fairies they are supposed to be. I don’t want to see the freaking cord??!!
And then – horror of all horrors – my friend started to hang decorations WHERVER. Just wherever??!!! GAH! No no no, you have to think about colour and size. You have to take into consideration what the ornament means to me, where I got it, and who from. Obviously the angel that I got in NYC has to have precedent on the higher branches. The bright green ball goes on the back of the tree – to balance out the balls but the colour is quite awful.
So I had to stop the madness by suggesting we wrap presents instead. Actually, she insisted on helping me with this too. I love wrapping presents. I love the precision of matching up the paper, the careful tape placing so the paper never moves, and the tightness of having a well-wrapped gift. None of that loose crap that men are really good at. And to my horror, my friend did just that! Double GAH! So I put her on bow duty, which to my relief she was amazing at.
Tthe moral of my story? If you are a Virgo and want to decorate for Christmas: don’t invite others over to help (except for putting the tree in the stand). Put on lovely Christmas carols, pour yourself some eggnog and go about making sure each detail is perfect to your own satisfaction. This is quite possibly the most rewarding way to decorate Christmas, alone alone alone.
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