Deck the friggin' halls

Today was supposed to be a happy, cheery kind of day. I planned to spend the morning cleaning and the afternoon putting up all the Christmas decorations.

Instead, I spent the morning on the phone with the bank and the rental car company, because the rental car company charged us $200 for upgrading us to the Explorer on our trip, even though MB specifically asked if it would cost more and was told it would not. After I got off the conference call with the rental car guy and the really hilarious bank lady, I saw that the upgrade was listed on the contract that MB signed, so I don't know if we'll be able to get our money back or not. If not, it's a lesson to us to be more careful next time, but MB will be really piss-ay about it.

It rained all day, so the last thing I wanted to do was go out on errands, but I had to go out at 11:00 to sign up for this six-week kickboxing program that is probably going to be the death of me. (If I disappear in January, you'll know why.) While I was out, I stopped at a bank branch to fax the rental contract to the hilarious bank lady at the downtown office. Then I went home to continue cleaning up the apartment in preparation for all the decorating I wanted to do.

I finished vacuuming around 2:30 and realized that I'd left the table that the tree sits on at my parents' house. D'oh! I put up a string of lights across the top of the sliding door and hung ornaments from it and set up the manger scene. Then it was back out into the rain to fetch the tree table, which wouldn't fit into my car until Mom and I took all four legs off. I was still hanging in there with the holly jolly Christmas spirit, though.

I got home and put the tree together while MB constructed a new and improved version of the cat fence he designed last year. Once that was done, I started putting the lights on the tree...and ran out halfway up. I decided to brave the rain one more time, and went to the store to get another box of lights. The box said I was getting white lights on a green cord. Groovy. Except when I got home half an hour later and opened the box, the cord was white. And then, when I decided to use them anyway and pulled them out of the box, it turned out they were icicle lights, NOT the mini tree lights the box promised. At this point I was ready to deck something, and it wasn't the flippin' halls, let me tell you.

MB convinced me to take down the sliding door ornaments and pirate that string of lights, so I did, because I sure as hell wasn't going back out in the rain a fourth time. By this point, I was so grouchy I wasn't really enjoying myself all that much. It all turned out okay in the end, though...by the time I got the stupid lights on and the garland and started hanging the ornaments, I was feeling a lot less Grinchy. I'm sure tomorrow the whole thing will be amusing, but for now I'm just ready for a nap. Here are some freakin' pictures:




The Christmas tree gets meta.

The new and improved cat fence, with interlocking tabs and pockets.



MB always complains that his stocking is the smallest. I tell him that the relative size of his stocking adequately reflects his status in the household.


My favorite Christmas ornament of all time.



Edited for Content

So I could add some kickass stuff. Looks like some of my favorite bloggers are especially enjoyable today. For some much better reading than you slogged through above, go here:

Sundry Mourning

Purple is a Fruit

Nothing But Bonfires

The Naked Ovary


Also, this is the coolest Christmas video EVER EVER EVER, totally swiped from Sundry Mourning: