Gosh, I don't know about you but this holiday season has got me stressed out! The grandbaby - bless her 5 year old heart - wants a lot of stuff (bad news for her: Santa's gonna bring what he brings and no more!)
and wants us to do a lot of decorating. Now I get the whole "Let's bling the house to the max for the holidays like the Griswold's" shtick but that runs against our very nature here in Opa Fritz's household. We simply don't like dragging a bunch of stuff out for a few weeks only to put it back again! Let's face it, we're not the decoratin' type.
AND THEN Bettina and I have been busy getting rid of things. Too many things causes a type of stress all of its own and we have both come to the realization that we have too many unnecessary objects acquired after many many years. Normally Bettina is not a 'thing' person - I'm the collector in the house - but even she has accumulated a lot of stuff over time and both of us finally got to the point where we said
"Enough is enough!!" and started pulling all manner of things out: cookware, kitchenware, decorative chachkis, clothes, even furniture. Our huge shelving unit and room divider we had bought in Germany back in the '80s is no more (no, this wasn't Shrank, but a massive, modular, shelf unit) replaced by downsized furniture from IKEA. What did we do with it all? Some went to thrift stores, some went to my oldest daughter's friend who owns a small second-hand business, and some ended up in the trash. It's a slow, sometimes painful, process but in the end we are both feeling a bit better for having done so. I think back on all the money we paid for some of these things but you know what? That money was wasted the moment we bought the
whatever. The effort it would take to recoup some of that would simply cause more stress, so mentally we just have to say "Bye!" - and life goes on. We're not finished! Nope, still got a ton of things that will end up going but man-oh-man did we put a dent in it!
Okay, back to Christmas decorating. Soooo, the grandbaby wanted a big tree this year. For years now space was so tight because of all the extra (and big) furniture items in the living room that I ended up putting a small 4ft tree on a table and calling it quits! Well, that whole 'getting rid of stuff thing' - including furniture - freed up enough space to put up a 'pencil' tree bought on-line at half-price from Wal-Mart. Pencil trees are tall and thin - ours is only about 38" diameter at the bottom - made especially for people who don't have a lot of room. The grandbaby helped too in that she chose a lot of the decorations we used this year for the tree including the glittery star on top. I think she has wonderful taste! :-) There's a circle of track with a cheap battery operated train from Wal-Mart underneath - I simply did not have the energy to do anything more substantial, sorry train guys, the 'oomph' just wasn't there!
Melody admiring the tree
...AND for the very first time ever, I put lights on the outside of the house!! I grew up in a big old house on top of a hill in an older neighborhood. Back in the '50s and '60s we didn't see much by way of exterior lights in my neighborhood and dad certainly wasn't going to go up on a ladder to hang any up. There were no exterior electrical outlets for him to plug lights into and he wasn't going to add outlets just for a bunch of lights that had to be taken down anyway. Anywho, that being said I grew up not being an exterior light kind of person. Same goes for Bettina - exterior lights at Christmas wasn't a thing she remembered in Germany (except for store fronts) and her family didn't do it either. Actually it wasn't such bad experience. I bought special clips which slide under the shingles and, hung four sets of lights up. Our house wasn't built with an exterior outlet out front but I had one added some years back and it came in handy. The lights are attached to a timer which sticks into the ground so I don't have to go outside and manually turn the lights on. As the lights are all LED the cost for electricity should be minimal (I hope) but then nearly all the lights in the house are now LED and overall the electric bill has gone down the past year or so.
...AND then there's driving during the holidays! Las Vegas is already rated as one of the cities with the worst drivers and the holidays haven't improved on anyone's skills!! Nuff said!
Well, the holiday season is almost over and with it - hopefully - the stress! Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina
