Hanging the Yule Fish and Other Holiday Stuff

It was a hot, muggy day here in Lower Arkansas. This photo was taken at noon today. The clammy humidity felt more like August than December. It didn't cool off until around 8:00 p.m. We had the air-conditioner running all day.

I went to Wally World looking for silver cord for my Christmas card googahs, and people were doing their holiday shopping in shorts and T-shirts. They were wet and sticky looking and dragging their tails. Thanks to the Internet I am doing all of my holiday shopping at 2:00 a.m. in my jammies and pink bunny slippers. It's the only way to go. I don't mind paying extra for shipping and handling if I don't have to endure the retail madness. That's just crazy.

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"The yule fish were hung
on the old map with care,
in hopes U.P.S. man
soon would be there."

Yep, you read that right...we hung the yule fish today. What's a body to do when it's 80° outside besides hang yule fish??? They might be bass, might be trout. I can't really tell for sure. But they're green and they light up and twinkle. We find them exceptionally appropriate for Christmas. This house is tooooo tiny to store wads of Christmas fru-fru so everything has to be dual purpose. The yule fish go camping with us in the summer and they make a dandy place to hang all the Christmas cards. The kitties used to bat the cards off the table. The yule fish and a fistful of clothespins have ruined all the kitties' fun. "Curses!" says Smudge.

We've never had a Christmas tree proper but I'm not grieving. Hubby and I worked holiday intensive jobs and were too exhausted most years to put one up. Plus, we have cats, not kids. Cats just LOVE Christmas trees and all the wiggly, shimmery, eatable (not!) ornaments and tinsel. Any cat worth her whiskers will be in the top of a Christmas tree before the last ornament is hung, batting off and breaking the first one. And we have a string-eating cat now. I am too old and cranky to take the stupid cat (Smudge) to the vet after she has eaten several strands of tinsel.

Several years ago we owned a fake ficus tree. I put little blue lights on it and called it our Christmas tree. Friends and family were appalled. I told 'em we were having a Jimmy Buffett Christmas. Put on yer Hawaiian flowerdy shirt and flip flops and join us. They tsk-tsked and said we were weird. They were correct.

We left the blue lights on the ficus for the rest of the year but didn't turn them on. The next Christmas, the Magic Christmas Tree Decorating Fairy visited our house in the middle of the night, plugged in the lights, and voila! all my Christmas decor was in place. Ain't life mysterious???

The year after the ficus tree I think we had the funeral plant Christmas tree. Somebody had foisted a plant on me after a funeral and he was sitting there in the living room all innocent-like minding his own business, not pulling his weight with the household chores. We had a meeting which the plant chose not to attend, so he got elected to be the Christmas tree that year. We clustered the wrapped gifts around him and he couldn't do a thing about it, not having opposable thumbs and all. That's what you get when you miss meetings.

Last year we had a live Christmas pine twig in a 5" pot. I bought him at the grocery store a week before Christmas for a dollar. He managed to hang in through Christmas but croaked right on schedule on New Years Day. We found him all slumped over that morning. We thought at first it was just a bad hangover, but realized he hadn't had anything to drink the night before, or the night before, or the night before that. Oh crap! Water! What a concept! I really felt bad about his demise, really I did. I don't do well with live houseplants.

My sister-in-law is BIG on Christmas trees. Her humongous main tree goes up the day after Thanksgiving. She just about wets her pants with anticipation Thanksgiving week thinking about the big tree trimming festivities on Black Friday. She has little bitty Christmas trees staged all over her house too. Sheesh. She thought we were PIT-E-FULL for not having a tree so that little green thing in the photo is one of her tabletop castoffs. Maybe I won't kill this one and hopefully the cats won't eat it.

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I got all the Christmas googahs finished today and in the cards. That completes the A-listers. Tomorrow I will work on the B-listers. B-listers get nice cards but no googahs. C-listers get the cheap-o cards. Folks on the C-list are Hubby's bowling buddies, old band mates, and high school chums; people I've never met in my life and who do not send us a Christmas card.

I dropped all the C-listers off the list this year and Hubby had a fit. He is all about sending stacks of Christmas cards when I'm doing all the work. I told him if he wanted them to get a Christmas card so badly he could jolly well do the cards himself. I've got three big boxes of crappy cards just waiting on him. (evil sneer) We shall see if any actually make it into the mailstream.


So Ho! Ho! Ho! That was my Saturday. Yours?