I like to observe all twelve days of Christmas. This means simply that I don’t even think about taking down my decorations until the feast of the Holy Family, Epiphany, when the Wise Men show up in Bethlehem to adore the newborn King. This is all part of the Christmas season and I see no reason to ignore it by dismantling the decorations just because my New Year’s Eve hangover has passed.
Epiphany also happens to be the date on all the Christmas cookies I’ve stuffed into my face since the day after Thanksgiving show up on my thighs. January 5 (my brother Andy’s birthday. He turned 50 this year. Now all my brothers are middle aged.) my jeans fit just fine. January 6 (Epiphany!) I couldn’t zip and the seams blew out. Time to take down the tree!
But this year, I’ve been very busy with baby fever. I haven’t given the tree a thought and now here we are, a week past it’s sell by date and there it sits, rotting in my living room, dropping needles like an incontinent etui, looking as sad as a sixty year old hippie in a mini skirt. And it’s an artificial tree.
In addition to spending as much time as I can down at the special care unit of the hospital, cuddling, feeding and getting to know Boopity and Boop, I’ve been trying to crank out as many canvases for the shop’s annual after Christmas sale as possible. I need to know my bills are covered through February before I chuck it all and take my babycation at Katie’s house. I figure it’ll be good for my tendonitis if I knock off (or at least severely curtail) painting for most of the next two months.
But there’s the tree. If I don’t take it down today, I’m afraid it will still be in the living room on Easter. Josie goes back to school soon and she doesn’t want to take it down. Jay won’t even notice it until the basketball season is over in late March. Then, if he does anything at all, I’ afraid he’d just throw the whole thing away, ornaments and all. I can’t have that! There’s over $3000.00 worth of needlepoint on that tree!
No, I didn’t spend that kind of money; I paint, block and finish my own ornaments. That’s what it would have cost anyone else for that kind of personalized designs. And that doesn’t count the needlepoint Christmas runner in the TV room or the ten large stockings hanging over the fireplace. But Jay would never throw those away: he loves those. He doesn’t appreciate just how much other people are willing to shell out to have such heirlooms but he does love ours. Yes, needlepoint is an expensive hobby but its no worse than golf or fly fishing or heroin. And you get to keep the product!
Not being able to stitch is the one thing I can NOT do with my current case of tendonitis and I miss it. A lot.
Watching Boopity Boop grow like chia pets has been really fun. In two weeks, they’ve packed on the ounces and learned to eat as though their lives depend on it. It’s like watching them grow in one of those old Disney films where they used time lapse photography to make it look like a plant sprouts, grows and blooms in a few seconds. A weird thing happens when I go to the hospital to see them: I mean to stay for a half hour or so and the next thing I know, four hours has gone by, the sun has set, dinner time has come and gone and I’ve spent all that time in conversation with little girls who can’t talk back. Babies are mesmerizing.
So yeah, it’s the seventeenth day of Christmas and I’ve barely begun undecorating.
Yesterday, the girls got discharged. They’ve gained enough weight and are eating so well that the doctors entrusted them to their completely inexperienced parents to take them home and care for them. I was in contact with Katie all day, reminding her that I was available, ready and willing to swoop in and take over lend a hand, if they needed it.
They wanted to see how they’d handle their first night of full time parenting.
The part of me that was disappointed was far outweighed by the delight of getting to sleep in my own bed and pride that the new parents were so gung ho to jump in head first with twins.
The night went well! They took turns caring for the girls on their three-hour schedule and have everything under control.
This is going to work out great! Adam has time off too, so he and Katie will get the girls’ routine down. I will be there during the day to help them out so they can get some sleep and I can spend the night if necessary but I live close enough so I won’t have to.
I solved the problem of the Christmas decorations, too.
I put away all the needlepoint.