Thursday, December 04, 2008
On the topic of my christmas tree
I have always been a weirdo about symmetry. Pictures on the wall, furniture, decorations, knick knacks........all sorts of things have to be evenly spaced or it drives me crazy. It just irritates me until it's fixed. It's a stupid thing to be so concerned about, but, it's one of my many quirks and I just have to deal with it. My christmas tree especially falls under my symmetry weirdness. My tree is decorated with silver, gold, and deep red. I spend hours getting the garland spaced right and all the glass ball decorations strategically placed by color and space. This year was a little different. I was really concerned about my tree. While we were shopping for just the right house to buy a few months ago I specifically looked around to see if the house had just the right place to put my tree. LOL. Chris was concerned about house value and upgrades that could be made and the technical aspect of things. My concerns were having a great laundry room, evenly sized bedrooms for the kids, and a great place for my tree. Last year we didn't get to put our Christmas tree up due to space restrictions. So anyway, putting my tree up this year was really important to me. Last week was a weird week. Since the week was filled with Chris's mom passing away, squeezing in Thanksgiving and making funeral arrangements and things we really wanted to include our family. So Saturday Chris invited his grandparents and dad and brother over to help trim the tree. The kids really wanted to put the ornaments on. So I backed off (as much as I could) and let them hang the ornaments. My tree looks so silly! The kids are only 3 feet tall so most of the decorations are on the bottom 3 feet of the 7 foot tree. Ornaments are all clumped together and nowhere near evenly spaced. It is driving me ABSOLUTELY CRAZY! There are big clumps of several sliver ornaments in one spot and clumps of red and gold elsewhere. I tried to move around an ornament or two and they got on to me. I thought that maybe over a few days I could spread out some decorations but they have noticed every change and been extremely displeased with my behavior. So now I have an uneven tree. Chris told me to stop being psycho and that it's more important to have fun trimming the tree than to have a beautiful department store looking tree. I immensely disagree! ha ha. The one year I'm having my whole family over for Christmas my tree is all crazy looking. I'm doing my best to restrain myself. Why do I have to be such a weirdo? Oh well, it wouldn't be me if I wasn't a complete dork. LOL. So family, FYI my tree looks awfully crazy this year!
I used to be the exact same way. I have "special" ornaments and everything. But I just got to the point that I repeatedly tell myself, "It doesn't matter. The tree is for them. They had fun decorating it." And although I have my special ornaments, it's also filled with lopsided ornaments made by them through the years. I try desparately to keep those intact. A couple of Taylor's construction paper ones got torn this year. That was a bummer.
ReplyDeleteEach year I resist rearranging the whole thing. I am better now. I just do a few here and there. I told Tristan it was due to the puppy. (And it sorta was.)
This year I switched to solid color lights and that feels more symmetrical. Chance always puts on the lights and I rearranged those after that. He wasn't too happy that I thought his handiwork was not perfect but he dealt with it.
So now I have solid colored lights and clumped ornaments. Could that be symmetrical somehow??? Maybe.
There is a bright side. Taylor has grown less and less interested in decorating. So I figure I have between 6 and 8 years of clumped ornaments before the tree is totally mine again.
And really, those few years are really not that long considering he won't be as excited to decorate at the end of those years. I have to enjoy the time now cuz he will be a teen much too soon and he won't be making me those ornaments or clumping them all on one branch any more. Gosh I think I just started tearing up.
Bring on the clumps!