Heads Up

Ho-Ho-Ho.  

It wasn't the merriest of Christmases at the Chez Bang Bang, but it wasn't the worst, either. So that's a win. 

The holidays can be hard. Harder still when I put a lot of pressures on  myself to create an unrealistic environment during long days at Tiny Town.

It just didn't happen the way I had visioned it in my mind. In my mind, I was hanging twinkling lights outside and garland and lights throughout the house and baking up dozens of Christmas cookies. 

The reality was, we quickly put up a Target tree, threw on some unbreakable "cat toys", put up a second small tree (the one I used to have at the old yucky house) in the kitchen, and of course my Christmas Village that finally came out of storage. Not one Christmas cookie was baked. Presents were haphazardly purchased and wrapped. The house remained quite a mess during the whole month of December, with packages and wrappings and glitter falling everywhere. 

But I did up up the Santa Head posted above. I've had that Santa Head since my I think my FIRST marriage, so we're talking 20 - 23 years ago. He's looking pretty good, right? Because I'm a great storage packer. After eight years in storage, he finally got to hang his head high on the new front door. It made me happy.

Hm, so in retrospect, after reading all the decorating I did do, I need to say, "Good job, Me!" instead of thinking about all the stuff I didn't accomplish.

I didn't get any Christmas cards out this year, either, so if you didn't get one from me, you were not singled out - no one did. 

My brother told me that I just need to lower my expectations of what I can reasonably achieve while working at Tiny Town. I think he is right.

It didn't help Christmas matters that we went on vacation right after Thanksgiving, which was a much-needed break, but also put me weeks behind in my holidaying. 

But guess what? Even without being perfectly prepared, Christmas came anyway, and presents got handed out and it was all fine.

And about that Christmas Village - the cats have not broken one piece of it. That was their Christmas gift to me.  

So sometimes what you don't get is even more important than what you do get.  

Hope you had a nice holiday, Reader, and are looking forward to a brand spanking New Year.