Although this has nothing to do with Christmas...I'll start by saying that I ran my first 5K Event of the season this past Sunday. The "Beat Michigan 5K" on the campus of Ohio State. I really like this course as it winds through campus, passing Ohio Stadium and running through the Buckeye Grove outside the stadium ... for you non-OSU fans, the Buckeye Grove is an area where the university plants a Buckeye Tree for every OSU Football player who is named as an All-American. I wasn't fast, and I did take a few walk breaks along the way, but the weather was great for running (not to hot and not too cold) and running around "The Oval" and past Mirror Lake...and of course, past both the north end and south end of "The 'Shoe" and through the Buckeye Grove made for a nice 5K. I'm hoping to find a 5K or two each month to run as I prepare to run a half marathon in May...I'm still debating on which 1/2 to run...do I run the CapCity Half Marathon in Columbus or do I run the Flying Pig Half Marathon in Cincinnati? The Flying Pig will get me in to Kentucky so I can cross that state off my list of states to run in, but I've seen the hills in Cincinnati...do I really want to run those?
OK...now to Christmas. Last night, as I was sitting around watching TV I started to do some lite decorating. I have a picture frame that hangs on my wall. It's holds eight different pictures. I have my normal year round pictures and behind them I store pictures to display at Christmas time. The Christmas pictures are now in front of the others. I took down my large picture of the NYC skyline and hung a big picture of Santa. I removed a few other pictures from the walls and hung up Christmas photos and plaques. Tonight I will remove the Hummel figurines from my corner cabinet and replace them with the figurines I bought a few years back of Rudolph and all his friends from the Island of Misfit Toys. I've put together a shopping list of ingrediants that I need to make rocks, and plan on making them for the first time in several years. Unfortunately the hanging of Christmas lights outside will have to wait this year, as I will be waiting for Able Roofing to replace all my gutters before I put up any outside decorations which might get in their way. I'm hoping to hear from them soon.
As I think about the decorating I remember the fun times, but I also remember that they usually didn't start out fun. Getting the Christmas tree to stand up straight was always a struggle. It always involved a lot of adjusting, a few firring strips under one or two legs of the tree stand and a lot of words that I won't repeat here. Then there were the lights. For some reason the lights were always tangled when we tried to get them out of the box. It would take a while to untangle the lights and a lot of those same words that usually came with trying to stand the tree up straight would also be used to untangle lights. As a kid I could never understand how lights that were put in a box and left untouched for a year could somehow get themselves so tangled up. (As I got older I figured out that if "someone" would have taken the time to put the lights away without just bundling them up and throwing them in the box then they might not have been so tangled up the next year and he might not have gotten so frustrated the following year and wouldn't have had to resort to taking out his frustration on those of us who had nothing to do with tangling the lights) ;-) Then came the matter of testing the lights. Of course these were the kinds of lights that, when one bulb didn't work, none of them worked. And this was all truely like a scene from "A Christmas Story".
But once the tree was up straight and the lights were untangled and working, then we would go about hanging the ornaments on the tree. There were a few ornaments that I remember hanging every year. I can't remember getting the ornaments, we had them for as long as I could remember. The red felt cello. The four elves on shelves ornaments. The string of copper bells. Every year some of the ornaments would be broken when we opened the box, but some of them would last year in and year out. Once all the lights and all the ornaments were on the tree, then the icycles got thrown on. We didn't waste icycles either...we had another bread bag that contained all the icycles that were on the tree the previous year. I used to really like just sitting in the living room with all the lights out and looking at the Christmas lights. I still like that. Now the Christmas tree stands are made to adjust easier to get the trees to stand up straight. Lights can have a bulb or two burned out without the entire string going out. I've started my own collection of ornaments that go on my tree each year. I have my own string of bells. Even though my house is small, I have, for the last ten years, gotten a real Christmas Tree. Although getting an artificial tree made erecting the tree easier, the thing that reminds me most of Christmas is the smell of fresh pine in the living room. That's something you can't get with an artificial tree. So far it's been worth the extra effort to put up each year and extra effort to clean up too.
OK...now to Christmas. Last night, as I was sitting around watching TV I started to do some lite decorating. I have a picture frame that hangs on my wall. It's holds eight different pictures. I have my normal year round pictures and behind them I store pictures to display at Christmas time. The Christmas pictures are now in front of the others. I took down my large picture of the NYC skyline and hung a big picture of Santa. I removed a few other pictures from the walls and hung up Christmas photos and plaques. Tonight I will remove the Hummel figurines from my corner cabinet and replace them with the figurines I bought a few years back of Rudolph and all his friends from the Island of Misfit Toys. I've put together a shopping list of ingrediants that I need to make rocks, and plan on making them for the first time in several years. Unfortunately the hanging of Christmas lights outside will have to wait this year, as I will be waiting for Able Roofing to replace all my gutters before I put up any outside decorations which might get in their way. I'm hoping to hear from them soon.
As I think about the decorating I remember the fun times, but I also remember that they usually didn't start out fun. Getting the Christmas tree to stand up straight was always a struggle. It always involved a lot of adjusting, a few firring strips under one or two legs of the tree stand and a lot of words that I won't repeat here. Then there were the lights. For some reason the lights were always tangled when we tried to get them out of the box. It would take a while to untangle the lights and a lot of those same words that usually came with trying to stand the tree up straight would also be used to untangle lights. As a kid I could never understand how lights that were put in a box and left untouched for a year could somehow get themselves so tangled up. (As I got older I figured out that if "someone" would have taken the time to put the lights away without just bundling them up and throwing them in the box then they might not have been so tangled up the next year and he might not have gotten so frustrated the following year and wouldn't have had to resort to taking out his frustration on those of us who had nothing to do with tangling the lights) ;-) Then came the matter of testing the lights. Of course these were the kinds of lights that, when one bulb didn't work, none of them worked. And this was all truely like a scene from "A Christmas Story".
But once the tree was up straight and the lights were untangled and working, then we would go about hanging the ornaments on the tree. There were a few ornaments that I remember hanging every year. I can't remember getting the ornaments, we had them for as long as I could remember. The red felt cello. The four elves on shelves ornaments. The string of copper bells. Every year some of the ornaments would be broken when we opened the box, but some of them would last year in and year out. Once all the lights and all the ornaments were on the tree, then the icycles got thrown on. We didn't waste icycles either...we had another bread bag that contained all the icycles that were on the tree the previous year. I used to really like just sitting in the living room with all the lights out and looking at the Christmas lights. I still like that. Now the Christmas tree stands are made to adjust easier to get the trees to stand up straight. Lights can have a bulb or two burned out without the entire string going out. I've started my own collection of ornaments that go on my tree each year. I have my own string of bells. Even though my house is small, I have, for the last ten years, gotten a real Christmas Tree. Although getting an artificial tree made erecting the tree easier, the thing that reminds me most of Christmas is the smell of fresh pine in the living room. That's something you can't get with an artificial tree. So far it's been worth the extra effort to put up each year and extra effort to clean up too.
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