There's a Christmas in there somewhere......

I have evaded, I have avoided, but now there is no escape.  First I had to unpack my suitcase from my trip last week and do the laundry.  Then I was catching up on the Quiltville mystery, the Civil War block of the week, the EQ block of the month.  Then I was putting borders on a nearly completed project.  Then I was making a pot roast for dinner and couldn't leave the kitchen.  

Then I ran out of excuses.  It's time to decorate for Christmas.  

Up on the ladder I went in the garage storage closet, dragging boxes down on my head, packing them into the kitchen and piling them on the table, until I had this:

 Oh good grief.

I don't know why I dread this so much every year.  Putting up the tree is easier, in some ways, than the Christmas village I did last weekend before I left to visit Mom.  Here's a photo, although I don't know why I bothered to take a new picture since it looks the same every year:

Now, THAT takes a while.  If you blow up the photo you can see all the little stuff that takes so long to unpack and place in the scenes - the people, the trees, the animals, the miscellaneous stuff like the lighthouse sign and the bird bath.  It simply takes FOREVER to get all that stuff off the shelves and unbox the parts, to put away my husband's antique radios from the shelves in the living room and put out the bases on which the display is arranged, to string the lighting power cords.  Of course, it's lovely when it's done and I would miss it dreadfully if it wasn't installed each Christmas, but the work, oh my, the work....

Compared to this, how hard is an artificial tree?  Why do I cringe so at the job?  Maybe it's the breakability factor.  We have blown glass ornaments, which is a deadly combination when put in the hands of a perennial klutz.  Or the going around and around and around to string the tinsel until you are dizzy.  Or - who knows?  I only am sure that I put it off until I can't any more.

All my quilt projects are caught up (except that I saw a great tessellated design done in blue and neutrals in the last quilt magazine I received, one that got me pulling blue fabrics and dreaming about it this morning - but I digress).  I have leftover pot roast for dinner, I have no other tasks at hand, it's time to trim the tree.

Watch my back.  I'm going in.