How many leaves can fall in one ¾ acre lot? One hell of a lot apparently. And that is just round one. While many of the leaves are off of our trees in our front yard, our neighbors trees have many, many leaves left on them just waiting to drift slowly to earth and land in our yard. Ah, the joys of Fall. You get to rake your neighbors leaves out of your yard. The logic in that is that your leaves will blow into your neighbors yard as well but the winds in my neighborhood don’t know that logic. Indianapolis winds believe that not only should my leaves end up all over my lawn but so should the leaves of my neighbors to the north, to the south and across the street. It’s like being the one house on the street that all of the kids congregate at because you are a cool mom and don’t make the kids take off their shoes when they come in your house. Only it’s not kids in this instance, it’s leaves. Leaf party at Daisy’s house. Be there or be square!
Our tree is half decorated at this point and here we are on day three. What can I say, we have a lot of ornaments. And of course each ornament has a story. I’m sure it’s that way in your house too. Everyone has those certain ornaments that makes memories cloud your eyes as soon as you unpack them from the tissue paper. I briefly mentioned the other day about my first Christmas on my own but I didn’t tell you about the Thanksgiving that year. I had lots of friends but they all had family dinners of their own to attend. So I had no plans on my first Thanksgiving alone and no-one to spend it with. I was dating the paraplegic photographer (which I broke up with 2 weeks before Christmas) but he wasn’t thoughtful enough to invite me to attend the Thanksgiving dinner his parents were putting on. One of the many reasons I dumped him (after I punched him in the eye). So I had decided that I was going to spend Thanksgiving putting up a tree. Off I went to one of the few stores that were open that day. In fact I got there just an hour before they closed. It seems that the entire town shut down at 1PM on Thanksgiving Day that year. I purchased a 6 foot artificial tree, a couple strings of lights, some tinsel and a turkey TV dinner. I spent that lonely Thanksgiving Day in 1992 eating a frozen turkey dinner from the microwave and stringing lights on an artificial tree and putting someone else’s ornaments on it.
You see, the day before Thanksgiving I had gone to the Salvation Army store and found a box of Christmas ornaments. After I strung the two sets lights I had purchased with the tree I sat down with the box of ornaments I had purchased the day before. It was sad actually. The ornaments were of a personal nature I thought. There was the handmade ceramic mailbox ornament someone had lovingly made and painted the name “Lisa” on. There was the goofy Papa Smurf ornament that made me laugh. And how could I forget the handmade angel made out of lace and felt. How could someone toss their memories into a box like that to be dropped off at the Salvation Army. It really makes me wonder to this day. I even thought up stories about the family in my head. It’s easy to see what a family is like by looking at their Christmas ornaments. You can see where they vacationed at by the ornament that says Nags Head NC on it. You can tell that someone cared enough about Lisa to make her a ceramic ornament and hand paint her name on it. Too bad Lisa didn’t care enough to keep the ornament. Good for me though.
That’s one of the reasons it takes us so long to decorate the tree. We go through each ornament and discuss almost every ornament in detail. When we go on vacations quite often we will get a special ornament to remind us of the place. And we have far away friends that send us ornaments from their town. And then there are the relatives that give us a special ornament each year. And how could we forget the ornament that G-man’s sister (the one with the … good … taste) sends us each year. Actually, lets just forget the ornament that G-mans sister sends us each year.
Did I mention my run of good luck I had yesterday? I forgot to purchase the Powerball ticket on Saturday night (sorry) so I went to the store yesterday to buy our Powerball ticket for this Wednesday’s drawing. While I was there I also picked up a couple of scratch-off tickets as well. Both tickets were winners! The Bah Humbug ticket won $1 and the Candy Cane ticket won $2. So I redeemed them and bought another Candy Cane ticket. I won $2 on that ticket as well! You know what this means don’t you? Every ticket I purchased yesterday was a winner so therefore the Powerball ticket has to be a winner too! Can’t you feel the luck in the air?
