Christmas decorating

It's impossible to believe it's nearly Christmas. Part of it is, I think, because it falls on a Sunday this year; Christmas on a weekend seems so sudden and truncated, as though you were just fitting it in between regular working hours.

And the other part, quite possibly, is because it was 12 degrees Celsius outside today, and I ran across the street without a jacket and without feeling the least bit cold, and it's a lot harder to find Yuletide cheer when it's sleeting; you really have to work for it.

Christmas snuck up on me this year. Truthfully, though: Christmas sneaks up on me every year. November tends to blow through my calendar like the wind it is famous for and then, well, there it is. And another truth: everything has snuck up on me this year. Understandably so, I would imagine. We did, however, manage to get a tree last weekend, and to decorate it:


It's a bigger tree than we've had before, so we had to get some new ornaments — it was looking a little sparse. My favourite (aside from the obvious) are the "12 Days of Christmas" ones.



I also made a vignette for the fireplace. We're working on getting the "wood burning" part of it working properly again, but it's a multi-step process and the saving of the funds for it is ongoing.


We also went to the Christmas market at the distillery district last weekend, but the only photographs I managed to take were those of the reindeer. The culprit was the excellent poutine: I was occupied in the eating of it, when I wasn't pushing the stroller, and had no hands for the camera. (I regret nothing.) In any case, it was a fun time but the impetus for it was kind of silly: as I was growing up, my family didn't do the big Christmas celebration (they still don't), and every year, that was a little disappointing. So now, of course, I have all these fantasies of giving the baby that perfect, beautiful, Germanic Christmas that I never had, filled with Christmas markets and falling snow and Santa Claus.

Except, you know what? She's a baby. She doesn't care. She fell asleep, and then she was cold, and then she was hungry, and then we went home.

Her feelings are probably healthier than mine.