Saturday, March 6, 2021

Quarantine Diaries: Part 24 - Christmas and the "Art" of Decorating

 


(Long time! No see! I'm really behind on posting)

It may sound a bit Scrooge-ish (not a word), but whenever I see a highly decorated house or watch one of those Christmas decorating shows on TV, my first thought is - "So who is going to take all of that down?"... always.

If you have been around here long enough, you know that DC LOVES his ornaments. 

If not, see below (all links open in a new window)

Easing my “Elf Envy” with ornaments and clues….



 We have always had a relatively large artificial tree but DC's ornament collection was much bigger than the tree. We were only able to use about 1/4 of this collection. The rest just sat in the cellar.

Because I am really limited on space, last year I bought an artificial tree that has no back to save space. It made sense to me since no one sees the back of your tree unless it's in the middle of the room. 

As it turned out, I wasn't a big fan of the looks of it (see: here), but we were stuck with it. I forgot about it so I did not get around to buying a new one this year.

We put the tree up and DC put as many ornaments as he could on it. 


Last year his cousin gave him some beautiful Mother Goose ornaments, which were too heavy (and wouldn't fit anyway) for the tree. We hung them on this metal thing I have hanging on the wall. We did that with all of the other ornaments he received as gifts as well.

So I stared thinking about all of the ornaments downstairs. Surely some of them could be hung on the metal thing and probably many other places.

I started digging through the ornament bags and brought a few upstairs.

And then I brought up some more...

And then more.

At this point I was determined to get all of his ornaments out.

I kind of went a “little” bit over the top trying to get all of DC’s ornaments out this year (he has so many that they all haven’t seen the light of day in years). Everyday he tries to sneak this Alice ornament onto one of the trees. And everyday I tell him it is too heavy for the trees.
I decided to hang it on the bowl it was sitting in.
Me: Is this okay?
DC: Yes!
Me: Do you promise to stop sneaking the ornament on a tree?
DC: (laughing) Yes!
He can now relax about this Alice ornament. - Facebook December 6, 2020

I mean, when would I ever again have this kind of time? The longest I have ever been out of work since got my first part time job at 16 was the 6 weeks after I had DC.

I used everything I had on the walls to hang ornaments from.






I found all of the ornaments he made for me over the years and all of his "Baby's First, Second, Third" Christmas ornaments.


(I understand that the puzzle piece is problematic but, we made that ornament way back when I used to be crafty and make ornaments for family. We used puzzle pieces only because I happened to have a puzzle that someone gave DC - he's never been a puzzle person. This was long before the puzzle piece was used by AS, or before I was aware of the puzzle piece's relation to autism)

They were everywhere. They were on every shelf... They were in a basket. 







I even bought two tabletop trees to hang some more (Let's talk about saving space? Let's talk about Pandemic spending?and laid more out underneath one of the tabletop trees.





About now you are saying "She has lost it.", but wait there's more.

All of his "food related" and Wizard of Oz related ornaments went in the kitchen. They went on the shelf, on stocking hangers and ornament hangers.


I even found room for my Star Trek ornaments!



Did it all look beautiful and Christmassy when I was finished?

No.

It looked like an ornament store.

DC was happy seeing all of the ornaments he had forgotten he had, so I guess that is all that counts.

Needless to say, I have been home waaayyy too long.

To answer the first question asked at the beginning of  this post....

It was me. I had to take them all down.

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All Quarantine Diaries: Here

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In case you are new here: “I tell stories, most of the time; single individual stories about this or that. Some may be written with humor and some may come across as “Oh, look at the cute thing DC did or said” (he does crack me up at times) but my object is always to make people understand how his mind works, never to "make fun of him"

It is difficult to explain “his” autism to anyone without resorting to 1000 examples and 1000 stories. So I tell 1000 stories to make clear that there are other sides to autism than the characters seen in TV or movies."

This blog is used for shorter posts, off topic posts and also for longer Face book statuses. Please visit my official blog site at: Taking it a Step at a Time 




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