I guess you could say I surrendered today. I don’t have room for the big Christmas tree this year, because I’m giving temporary refuge to a sofa that’s in transition from Mom, who has a new recliner just like mine and doesn’t need a sofa any more, to Eric, who doesn’t have a place to put a sofa but expects to in another month or six. It’s fine, though. The extra furniture gives me another flat surface to sort and collate work product on. It just takes up space, and so: no big tree.

So I wasn’t going to decorate at all (not in protest, you understand, or even in humbuggery (ooh, not a good-looking word at all)), but in lethargy. (Should it be bahhumbuggery instead?) But today, the sun came out and it was warmer than it’s been for awhile (even though my birdbath was frozen over when I got up this afternoon morning), so I surrendered to the season and got the big box of decorative plastic items out of the garage.

It’s definitely more festive around here now, with the two little trees up, along with various figurines in the shape of Santa, bears, and Santa-bears. One little tree is all fluffy and doesn’t take ornaments. The other one will hold a few ornaments, so I picked out some that would fit the space and not make the branches hang too low. One of them is the one David colored for me when he was four. The others are more or less random.

In the big box I also found all my holiday CDs, so I stacked them on top of the CD holder and will play them all at least once before I put them away again until next year. First up are my three favorites, the ones by Shawn Colvin, Steve Tyrell and Ottmar Liebert. But I’ll also find time to listen to “Merry Axemas, Volume 2,” so that I can hear Ted Nugent playing “Deck the Halls” (although I don’t think I want to know what Ted actually decks his halls with).