When I got the tree box* out of the crawl space this year, I saw that I’d left a note to myself on the side about some ornaments that needed repair. I set them aside, then sorted the others by category. I realized that some of these ornaments, I just did not care for, so I put them on another sideline.
Meanwhile, Mr. Rilch was putting on the lights. We have two of those strings with the eight settings, one of Snoopy, and one of pumpkins, which has been rigged up to accomodate an Enterprise and a shuttlecraft. The Enterprise has active lights, and the shuttlecraft talks in Spock’s voice when you push a button. Why yes, we are geeks. We also have the Borg cube, but that’s just an ornament that doesn’t do anything. Anyway, he added a thick garland to all of this, then turned the reins over to me.
After I’d put up the ornaments I did like**, I fixed all but one of the damaged ornaments. A bird was falling out of its nest; Flying Santa had lost his trapeze, and the strawberry phosphate was falling out of its glass. Also, Gandalf the Red*** lost his staff while I was unpacking him. Superglue took care of all of these, and tomorrow I will borrow Friend’s acrylic paint so I can give the gumdrop bear his eyes back.
Today, I took the unwanted ornaments to the Salvation Army. They’re good ornaments, mostly fake-pewter; perhaps someone else will care for them more than I. Then I went across the street to the hardware store, where they were having a 30% off sale on ornaments, and got eight little aluminum baubles, two with reflectors. Very classy.
So our tree is pretty thick with decorations, but I wouldn’t say cluttered. Also, I like that we have lights in many colors, but no green. Makes it look more like an ornament itself.
*Let’s see…try to find a decent live tree in Southern California, get it home without getting your car too scratched up, haul it up the stairs, water it and sweep up its needles for weeks, and live with the risk of fire hazard? Or take a box out of the crawl space and a tree out of the box, then reverse after New Years’? You can get all kinds of pine fragrances.
**I made sure to distribute them evenly. Six wooden stars on six different “sides” of the tree: two high, two midway, two low. And like that.
***Not associated with Tolkien or New Line. He’s actually a pre-Coca-Cola Father Christmas. I didn’t know that when I bought him, years ago; I just saw a voluminous beard and wooden staff and said, “Gandalf the Red”.