My Christmas wreath is still up, inside the house. It’s live. Or, I mean, I guess, it was live. Now it’s a fire hazard. It’s going to be May soon.
Your turn. I promise not to tell.
My Christmas swag is still on my front door. It’s more than mostly dead.
We had an inspection at my building today, so after getting notice of it last Thursday, I finally took down our 3’ artificial Christmas tree.
I’m going on vacation in May, so I knew that if I didn’t take it down, it would be mid-June by the time the sucker came down, if at all. “Hey, I’ve left it up six months too long already. In another four months I’ll just have to put it back up. Why not just leave it…?”
We have a string of multicolored outdoor Christmas lights along the roof in the back of the house. The lights have been there since 1998.
My friends and I drew names for Secret Santa.
None of us have exchanged them yet. The gift I bought is sitting, wrapped in a Christmas bag, on my bedroom floor. Five months now.
I still have some random Christmas shit up on the walls. I’m moving in a couple months anyway so I really can’t be bothered.
The remnants of our jack o’lantern are still on our front windowsill. Beat that.
When I moved into my current house, the previous owners left a lot of stuff. Some of it was awesome (they left, for example, trash cans and alcohol). But they also left these burgundy paisley valances in the guest bedroom. I noted the exquisite ugliness of the valances, and thought, “I really need to get rid of those.”
A few weeks later, the previous owners stopped by to see if I had any questions about how to work things around the house. I pointed out that they’d left the valances; did they want them?
“You know, it’s funny,” she said. “When we moved in here ten years ago, the previous owners left them. We always thought they were ugly, but for some reason, we never got around to taking them down.”
I told the story to a friend of mine a few days later. He looked at me, then walked into the guest bedroom and took the valances down.
So, there but for the grace of God go I.
I had a Christmas ribbon that I’d weaved into the blinds on the front door; I finally took that down this week and stuffed it on a shelf in the store room. There is also a strand of lights in the front window that we forgot to take down. It doesn’t even reach the plug, as we had set things up with a power bar so we could have the tree in that corner. We just took everything down and forgot about those lights. I’m pretty sure they’ll be there until next Christmas, because the boxes they go in are awkward to reach, and we are both, in fact, just that lazy.
There is also a rock, on a kitchen window sill, that was there when we moved in. It’s a big, round rock, but it doesn’t do anything (of course not, it’s a rock!). I mean, it doesn’t hold anything down or prop anything up - it’s just there. But even after being here for nearly 2 years, we haven’t moved it or got rid of it. I think we feel that it really isn’t ours, so we’ll just leave it there until we move. Not that I can get to it now anyways, as it is sealed between the two windows and winterized-saran-wrapped in. I assume we’ll take the winter seal down sometime before July.
I still have hard boiled eggs in the fridge from Easter that I have not throw out yet.
Does that count?
I tell people that I did reply to their text-messages and the network is to blame if they didn’t receive them. I’m very sincere.
When in fact I just ignored them because I was lazy and/or didn’t want to talk to them.
I’ve also claimed that I’m not feeling well when really I’m just bored and want to go somewhere else.
I have crap in my trunk from when I moved six months ago that was important enough to pack but not important enough to take out of the trunk. Perhaps it never will be.
I’ve told people that I’ve seen movies/TV shows that I actually haven’t seen, just so that they won’t bore me with descriptions.
My mother thinks I love the quilts she makes me.
I flipped off an old lady in a Lincoln the other day for taking too long to make a right-hand turn.
I feel cleansed now.
So, what happens to it? Does it just mold away? Does it eventually dry out?
Also, this morning I pretended like I was late because I forgot I had to work today (it’s not my usual schedule) but actually I just took a long time in the shower and lost track of time. And I read a chapter more in the bathroom than I intended to.
The cat threw up behind a chair more than a week ago and it’s still there. My husband saw it first and didn’t do anything about it so I’m not either.
My Christmas village is still up.
The new window sticker is still on the basement window from when the house was built 7 years ago. Last year I finally took the building permit out of the garage window.
One year I didn’t change my car clock for daylight savings time and just waited until it got to be right again. Changing the clock takes about twenty seconds.
The trunk of my car has piles of shavings in it from a rabbit cage I transported a couple of months ago. I have no plans to remove them, ever. I also don’t wash my car. I think the Saturn people do it when I get the oil changed every 4 or 5 thousand miles. 
I have a year old Hefty bag of dog poop in my backyard. It’s been tied shut the whole time. I’m afraid to go close enough to pick it up now to put it in the real trash. And it rains a lot here so I’m sure water has seeped in and liquified it.
I’m moving in 3 months so I’m going to have to do something about it. I wonder if there’s someplace I can rent a biohazard suit…
You guys need to look at this differently. It’s not just a Christmas wreath - soon it will be a May Day wreath! I try to work it out so that all my decorations evolve through the seasons, and I emphasize that it’s “a reflection of the circle of the seasons”. The Christmas (Winter Solstice) tree becomes the Maypole, except for the end, which is cut off for next year’s Yule Log. The Maypole becomes the support pole for the Corn Man or John Barleycorn in the fall and is burnt with him. John Barleycorn’s ashes are used to darken the altar for Samhain (Halloween). I get a whole three months’ legitimate use out of the Halloween decorations, because we’re in “The Dark of the Year”!
Neopaganism: it’s everywhere you don’t want to clean.
Hi, neighbors!
Well, one of you must be my next-door neighbor. They still have what looks to me very much like a Christmas wreath on their front door.
I don’t mind. I won’t say I didn’t leave my Hanukkah decorations up well into January (and Hanukkah decorations are easier to put up and take down than Christmas ones, at least if you only put up menorahs and electric menorahs like I do), and I won’t say I’m always on top of yard or house work that needs to be done. I put my trash out before 9pm the night before trash day (I think we’re not supposed to do that, but everybody does). I’m glad my neighborhood doesn’t have a homeowners association that nags people about stuff like this.
My Christmas tree is still up. (It’s a skinny pencil tree that doesn’t take up much room). I kinda like it. Of course the ornament boxes are still on the dining room floor and the Christmas wrap box is still out as well. I do have it on my list to put Christmas away though. As soon as I get around to it.
I also have a bag of junk from ever car I’ve traded in since 1995. (I’ve had 7 cars just in the last 5 years)*. It seemed important enough to clean out of the cars, but once those bags came into the house, they haven’t been looked into since. I’m betting there’s some good stuff in there that I’ve been looking for.
*I work at a dealership.
It looks like a deflated balloon, kinda. If a balloon were pale orange and spotted with mold. Even the birds won’t touch it.
I’ve got no interesting Christmas Stories like that, but my uncle was one of those people who kept Christmas lights up year round. I believe he had one strand up for a little over a decades (which seems like an exceptionally long lifespan to me, but what do I know).
Things that aren’t Christmas related:
I have a to do list sitting tacked on to my bulletin board that’s been there for over a year.
Another uncle had two dead goats (We named them Paul and Enid) sitting in his abandoned barn for at least five years. To be honest, they may still be there (in some capacity).
When I went out to prune the rose bush at the front of the house in January, I thought, ‘those Christmas lights need to go in the shed’. They’re the white ones on a green mesh that you wrap around the shrubbery. I pruned the rose bush (quite severely) and cleaned up and put the pruning secateurs away. When I weeded the pathway along the rose bush and shrubbery, I thought ‘those Christmas lights need to go in the shed.’ I swept up all the weeds and that was good. When I weeded the bed where the shrubs and roses are, I thought ‘those Christmas lights really need to be taken down and put in the shed’. I swept up the weeds and dumped them in the weed-dumping-place in the back yard, and it was good. When I raked the front and put down more bark mulch, it occurred to me that ‘those Christmas lights… I really should pull them off the shrubs and put them in the shed.’ The new mulch looked good, and every year there are fewer weeds. When I periodically checked in the months since the severe pruning to ensure that I hadn’t, in fact, killed the rose bush, I thought ‘it’s time to put those Christmas lights away…’ When it was time to trim the shrubbery to keep the shape, I thought, ‘yes, indeed, it’s time to put those lights in the shed.’ I trimmed the one shrubbery of the four that grows the most vigorously, and things were looking good. One of the things I have to do this weekend, before the rose buds out too much and I can’t get to it, is to go and pull off all the leaves on the !@#$$%^^&* ivy that was planted with the rose. Maybe when I there, I’ll take the Christmas lights and…
My birthday’s in June. For my birthday, I sure hope the Christmas lights get put in the shed. (In my defense, they’re dark green and unplugged, and blend into the shrubbery quite nicely when not on and twinkling.)