Prepping for the holidays

Sounds medical, doesn't it? Prepping for surgery. Prepping for an exam. Prepping for a trip. But, prepping for the holidays?

Oh, yeah.

I spent yesterday prepping. Decorating for Christmas is not for sissies, you know. It's work. And as the main Christmas decorations worker in this household, I needed a game plan, especially after having been gone all of Thanksgiving and having had my mind on a wedding* and not on the holiday season. But the wedding is over. On to the next Big Deal.

One does not simply put up the tree and hang the ornaments. If that was all there was to it, I'd be done in an afternoon. But the house needed cleaning (house lite in this case) and things must be put away. But where? If my reindeer collection is to abide in the china cabinet, where is all that going to go? Some of it is in two boxes on the floor of the guest room. The rest was squeezed in with the good china in a drawer I will have to remember to open ve-ry care-ful-ly. The mantle holds detritus from trips. So not Christmas if I'm going to hang seven stockings there. (The cats have a stocking, if you're counting.) So that goes into the buffet piece and I pull out the Christmas cat plates my mother collected.

The magazine rack is hidden well enough but a casual glance shows I've accumulated stuff that's two years old. Thank goodness the trash pick-up came today. The coffee table has an unused onyx chess set with broken pieces. Don't ask why it's still there. I don't know, but it's hidden underneath now, just waiting for the visiting cats to find it on the 24th.

Today I will pull the linens from the cedar chest and make decisions on where they will go. I will find my boxes of reindeer and squeeze them into the cabinet and set them atop my great-grandmother's pump organ. The new tree, the one in three pieces and already lit (as if that's going work), is in the house and has been thoroughly explored by the cats.

All that I need now is time and since it's sleeting out... I think I have it.

*Wedding photos are building up on the computer and will be posted soon.