Ornaments

I was all gung ho to come in here today and post about my voyeuristic tendencies at grocery stores. I was going to speculate on what my grocery cart says about me, and what yours might say about you, but then I got a book out of the library and, lo and behold, the intro of the book is exactly that. It made me feel unoriginal and frankly like posting my observations would kind of make me a hack and a plagiarizer, so you (The roughly 4 people who actually read this, which includes my dad. Hi, Dad!) are going to have to get something else instead.

Today Audrey and I started getting into the thick of unpacking Christmas decorations. The weekend after Thanksgiving, I bought some new lights and a blow up thing for outside and put them up, but we hadn't touched the Christmas boxes that are stored so lovingly in my shed. (By lovingly, I mean they are tossed in there sort of haphazardly and covered in spiderwebs.) So we took them out today in preparation for obtaining a tree tomorrow, or possibly so that I could just say "Please be careful with that" until my head explodes, whatever comes first.

Pulling out the ornaments always reminds me of where I got them. I try to collect an ornament when I travel or go on vacation these days. I used to collect coffee mugs, but that led to me lugging home 15 mugs from Europe when I went to visit a friend who was living there. I think I finally ditched the last of those last year, a mere 15 years later. Because leaving them around was a talking point that I didn't want, "Oh yes, I got that when I went to Kassel with my friend who was living in Germany.....Was it a grand time? Well, I pretty much spent the entirety of my trip being dragged to her friend's houses for tea because they were "GREAT" cooks. They didn't speak much English and I didn't speak much German, and they kept trying to cook "American" food for me. I was there 15 days and lost 32 pounds and didn't really have a single conversation the entire time." (I do love you Jillian, even if I will never vacation with you again.) Ahem. I think there was a topic around here somewhere.....

So here I was pulling out ornaments and remembering, or trying to remember, where I got them when I decided that it would be a good idea to write this stuff down. Especially since some of it has already gotten a little cloudy. My mom's Christmas tree has a lot of ornaments that everyone agrees she has had for a long time, but the origin is in question. Did I make that fake Ice Cream Sundae or did my brother? Was it 1st or 2nd grade. Since my mom's ornaments are mired in a bog of cloudy memory, I decided to write down anything important about my Christmas decorations.

Of course, deciding to start this after I have had a few glasses of wine mean that I am currently (because I am kind of drifting between this blog entry and decoration logging) writing down entries that consist of statements like "Ornaments XYZ, purchased in a spending binge at Pottery Barn after Christmas sale sometime between 2007 and 2010. Not really that important, but very pretty." And, "Inherited from Carl, I don't know when or where he got it, but it is kind of ugly, so I don't usually put it on the tree." I am debating on telling the truth on some of them. Because for every IMPORTANT ornament purchased at a family reunion or on a honeymoon, there is one that I would have to fess up to buying so that my 4 year old would just shut the heck up and let me finish my Target shopping in peace. And that doesn't seem like a very sentimental remembrance that someone is going to want to read in the future. Although, sometimes I think that grandparents could use a reminder that, as much as they might wish things to the contrary, their kids weren't angels who always behaved and showed respect when it was due. I think those items I will wait until tomorrow when the wine has passed my system to make a final judgement call on.

So tell me, what kind of decorations for the season do you have? Do you decorate like my late husband, a tree full of cheap ball ornaments? Do you have a menorah that has been a family heirloom? Do you know where your Christmas tree ornaments came from? Good memories or bad, let me know.