Well, it couldn't wait any longer. Today had to be devoted to putting the remainder of Christmas away. I would have preferred to have been outside a little more, since it was a cold, crisp, and bright blue day, and a hike around the neighborhood just didn't do it.

And so it happened after breakfast and "walkies." I'd gotten to the point where all I had left to do was the living room (which of course included the tree); I had taken down all the kitchen and dining room decor yesterday during lunch and then after I finished work, but now I was down to the last. I put the village buildings carefully back into their container, buffering between them with bubble wrap, and put the trees in one bag and the people and the accessories in another, with the lights tucked in one corner. Finally, at noon, I started the tree. I stripped all the tinsel off the front and then put the ornaments up, the glass in their boxes and the plastic in their bags; once I had the front cleared I did the same to the back. Once the tree was cleared, I took it apart and it all just lay piled up in front of the fireplace, to Tucker's consternation.

While I worked I listened to a couple of Christmas CDs I hadn't gotten to, like my Leroy Anderson album and the album of Alfred Burt carols, and also to the BBC: the audio version of As Time Goes By and more of Amanda Vickery's A History of Private Life. I could kick myself for missing the first part of ATGB, as they did a flashback scene with young Lionel and young Jean, which didn't happen in the television series.

Finally I removed all the tins and other decorations, like the memory jars and the snow garland and "Bandit's angels," from the room divider and put whatever small decorations inside the tins to concatenate it all, and put those in the half-filled porch box that also holds the Santa and Rudolph that go in the foyer and the stuffed Rudolph and Max the dog who sit on the hearth, because there was no room at the inn...cough...in the stuffed animal box for them.

I noticed at the last minute that I hadn't taken the garland down from around the hall door or the deck door, or the mistletoe, so I did that as well, and then it really was all finished and I could relax for a bit before James got home.

We had supper at Ken's—some wonderful pork chops—and then went to Publix to check out the twofers. Picked up Smart Balance, crackers, Knorr sides, and a few other groceries (including yellow bananas, since Kroger has been doing the green banana thing again). From there we came home, and, with James to help with the lifting, in 45 minutes we had all the containers back in the closet. The box said the tree would fit back in it; yeah, only if I had a compression device on site! The three sections of the tree are piled in the corner where the old one used to stand, along with the library tree and the space tree, and all covered with the red plastic cover we put on the old tree.

Everything looks so naked, which means I need to put up the winter decorations. :-)

Finished up the night with Doctor Who (although I had to run auto program again on the channels, since RetroTV was moved from 32-9 to 32-7 without so much as a by-your-leave) and Hawaii Five-O.

Labels: Christmas, decorating, food, shopping, television

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:28:00 PM

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