We started the day with a nice pot of fresh roasted Kenya AA coffee, packing the kids off to school and settling back into the kitchen for the rare, leisurely morning breakfast of taters O'Brien, sausage links and eggs. Today is the day when the tree went up, and it is a big tree. When you own a house with ten foot ceilings, anything less looks like a toy. This one is a hand-me-down from the in-laws. They didn't know what they were thinking when they rescued it from the Big and Tall Tree Store, because they don't have high ceilings, they have modern ceilings, and they were put up with economy in mind. I don't like to be reminded that I'm in a house when I'm in a house, necessarily. I could paint clouds on my ceiling and feel like I'm outdoors. That's partly because I keep the thermostat down in the sixties because…I have high ceilings.
Madame got the Christmas boxes down from storage and began sorting and hanging lights and ornaments, calling for me when she couldn't climb any higher and needed the assistance of my height. Madame is my code word for my bride. People ask me why I call her that, and I tell them it is because she is madame wife. If she's near, she usually pipes up and says, "yep, and he's my has been." Anyway, I was more than happy to oblige with the light and ornament hanging, as the job I was supposed to be doing upstairs included hauling down broken pieces of gypsum and framing timbers from the wall I knocked out on Tuesday to make the laundry room twice as big. What I was doing instead was writing, and taking work breaks. Whenever I heard her approaching footsteps, I'd run back upstairs and bring down more debris and stack it by the trash can crib. I think she knew what I was doing the whole time.
I finally got this update knocked out because she went to haul the kids back home from school. I think she's back. More later…
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