Why I haven't been blogging

Thanksgiving is over and we're ready for Christmas decorations! I started trying to decorate Sunday night, but there was too much chaos. So I started organizing.

I organized closets Sunday night. The pile of give-aways took up residence by the front door and started spilling all throughout the living room.

Monday I tidied all afternoon, to no apparent effect. My room is actually much cleaner, but you couldn't really tell, which was depressing.

Tuesday I cleaned all afternoon and evening, also to not much effect. I cleaned Meg's room, scrubbed the bathroom (and lit a candle!), did laundry, and around eleven p.m. got the kitchen mostly clean, except for some residual dishes for the next round in the washer. It was pretty good, except Jonathan was under the weather and no matter where I went, someone was sure to come behind me and make messes. Herds of plastic animals sprouted up on chairs, magically. But I was making headway. Barely.

So this was the score as of Tuesday night: I'd cleaned my room, Meg's room, the bathroom, and the kitchen. That left the hall and the living room. In a five-room apartment, you'd THINK with four of the rooms clean, it would seem clean overall. But no. The house was still winning, just on the strength of that one living room alone, and furthermore it was trying to intimidate me. Bad house. Meanwhile, every day Meg anxiously asked if we could decorate, and every day I had to tell her no, we had to clean more. So I felt like a boring mother, as well as a losing housekeeper. Grr.

But. Today was the day. We finally got rid of that pile-o-junk and vacuumed the living room. Woohoo!  Meg was quite helpful about putting toys back in her room, and even threw away all the acorns that were getting stomped into the rug, which you can now see again and walk on barefoot. Life is good. Mommy, can we decorate?

Oh happy day, we got out the Christmas tree! This is the smallish one, about six feet tall but slimmer than average, that we got the first year we were married, and it's started to shed branches a little bit. I'll be sad when it goes, because it's just right for our smallish house. But, er, in the heat of battle I'd been putting off the question of where to set up this smallish tree. I can't for the life of me remember what we did with it last year, and in any case it probably wouldn't fit there again because now we have a computer and filing cabinets. I discussed it with Emily, and came to the decision that with two computers in the living room, we don't really need the TV in there. So I reorganized the house again, dismantled the TV shelf and put its contents on other shelves, where they don't fit, put the TV in my room where I'd never intended to have a TV, squeezed the empty shelf awkwardly into Meg's room where she promptly started lining up plastic animals, and set up the tree in the living room, all green and cheerful and shedding slightly.

But we're decorating. And we had a friend over this evening, who stomped us soundly at Scrabble. So there.