Printouts and Christmas Trees

Don't ask.

Yup, that's what I'd say if you asked me how my weekend was. But in order for you to fully appreciate the weekend, I guess I would have to cough up a few details.

Say, how I squeezed in the reading of a printout (double-checking for spelling and typos on THE BABY WAIT which is due back in Toronto by Dec. 15) in with putting up my Christmas tree, participating in a parade for my dayjob boss, hustling my little one to practice for the Christmas Cantata and going to her teacher's Christmas Concert.

I will say this -- during each and every event on my busy weekend calendar, I found myself saying, "Gee, I'm glad I took time for this!"

The tree was the worst chore. I'm too chintzy to buy a pre-lit tree, and I HATE putting on the lights. I usually put up my tree on the first Saturday in December. Kate would NOT let me put it off beyond Sunday. Which, I guess, was a smart move on her part. Any closer to Christmas, I would have stuck a bow on a poinsetta and said, "Ho, ho, ho ..."

No, I wouldn't have. I don't think.

Kate is big enough now to put ornaments on the tree, which is a bad thing and a good thing. The good part is that she basically did it. The bad thing is she was bored out of her skull until I could get her to that point.

Which brings me to another good/bad point: having so many ornaments. The bad part, of course, is the storing and the putting them on the tree. But the good part is that I have so many that you can't see any green on the tree when we're done (and we're talking MAMMOTH eight-footer here), so it didn't matter where Kate installed the ornaments -- it wound up looking as good as I could do it. The only thing I really did was help move the breakable ones to the top, in vain hopes that our two demon cats wouldn't trash 'em.

THe best part: it's DONE. And I got the printout read, too! Yay!