Pay no attention to the junk piled behind the tree that I didn't notice you could see when I took this picture with my phone

Well hello, long-hibernating tabletop tree that I bought for Shoebox Manor—my first elfin Chicago apartment—and that eventually became our dining-room tree when my ex and I bought our palatial two-tree-accommodating condo. I finally rescued the tree when I liquidated my storage unit this summer, and at last its branches are complete again in their mélange of silver, white and cornflower blue ornaments, ribbons and besequined birds artfully curated to complement our old Wedgewood dining room. The palette doesn’t quite work with my mom’s Rustic Kountree Krafts décor, but I choose to squint and pretend it does. Plus I did a sloppy job perching the birds on the branches so I’ll have to edit some pokey-outy feathered tails at a later date.

I wasn’t really in the mood for Christmas carols, but I found an old Chicago playlist so I decorated the tree to the dulcet—and wistfully nostalgic—tones of Beautiful Day, Ray of Light, Around the World, Bad Romance, Get Lucky, Single Ladies, Whispering Your Name and other regular-rotation players from the soundtrack of my old life. The combination of my Chicago tree and my Chicago tunes put me in a mood I’m not sure I’m ready to be in, but the corner is dusted and vacuumed, the tree is up, and all that’s left to do is figure out where I hid my timer so the lights will automatically be on every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up.

Speaking of going to bed ... good night!

Great-read books that rose to the tops of the piles in tonight’s brief excavation of the storage unit:

Two are bipolar. Two are totally gay. One is a fascinating historical-fiction fantasia (Let the Great World Spin—read it!). One is the pre-McSteamy actual reference book that I received for Christmas 1981 back when I had dreams of being an ER doctor. But it qualifies as a great read only if you really REALLY want it to be.

When you FINALLY put away the Christmas decorations in your bedroom and bring out your regular decorations and rediscover that you’re a bit of a Francophile

Also: Covet my freshly polished, super-awesome bookshelf built from remnant wood by my homebuilder great-grandfather!

Also: My beanbag juggling cows have started yet another year (decade?) being shelf decorations instead of teaching me how to juggle.

I used to write a four-page, single-spaced, 10-point Garamond (because it’s narrower than Times New Roman so I could squeeze in more words) Christmas letter and mail it to 300+ of my closest friends and relatives

I also used to spend November through January under a crushing blanket of self-imposed stress. And crippled by paper cuts and the costs of printing and stamps.

Now I pace myself by blathering daily on social media instead. Merry Christmas to me!

Goodbye for now, obscene amounts of Christmas crap!

I’ve finally gotten you culled and organized enough to pack you away with a passable amount of OCD compliance. I feel a nagging compulsion to buy all matching bins next year so you look less overwhelming when you’re put away again. But as an imagined need, that would be even more obscene. So I won’t even bring it up.

We sure have some creepy ornaments

And some breathtakingly-adorable-child-picture ornaments. And, curiously but still admittedly Christmasy, a shapely-woman-wearing-a-tasseled-hanging-hook-and-beveling-in-an-unmissably-red-dress ornament. And, for reasons known only to the tooth fairy, a wooden bunny ornament. A wooden Christmas bunny ornament.

But, of course, the only reason I'm making this post—aside from finally exposing the Christmas terrors of my haunted, haunted childhood wrought by our creepy pantsless flat-handed pantyhose-head child-eating demon elf ornaments—is to report that I have just now, almost in time for an Easter visit from a wooden Christmas bunny, completely denuded our Christmas tree.

Dude. I totally just said denuded.

THERE ARE THREE PERFECTLY COZY, PERFECTLY AVAILABLE LAPS IN THIS ROOM

#DumbAssCat

Here's your one chance ...

I probably shouldn’t have been so cavalier about living my life effortlessly free and clear on my bipolar meds this morning, because by noon I was sliding into a depressive episode fast enough that I left work and came home to crash. But five hours of sleep and shovelfuls of leftover Christmas comfort food have brought me back from the brink. Seeing Kelly Clarkson sing “Fancy” in tribute to Reba McEntire on Kennedy Center Honors didn’t hurt either. I’m profoundly exhausted, but I think I dodged a bullet by canceling the rest of my day to sleep. Onward!

I thought I had to make it to midnight tonight, but I won last night without even knowing it!

I’m giving this victory to someone special.

krumkake (say it with me: CRUMB caca):

a thin, crispy, bigger-than-your-hand Norwegian waffle cookie rolled into an unwieldy cone shape for two purposes: 1) to fool you into thinking it can hold ice cream or any other delicious treat without crumbling all over everything the second you try to eat or even hold it; 2) to crumble all over everything the second you try to eat or even hold it anyway

Gee, I wish I was able to see my nephew

If our Christmas brunch were White Christmas, I’d be Major General Thomas F. Waverly, our centerpiece would be a totally-real-looking, four-foot-tall, completely-stage-blocking tiered cake decorated with 12" tapered candles, and my nephew would be a stupid and instantly forgettable musical about the military featuring hundreds of soldiers who secretly came to my failing hotel in the dead of night SPECIFICALLY FOR ME TO SEE.

#ChristmasCountdown: Merry Christmas!

1-Day #ChristmasCountdown: Bedtime

Dudewrapping

My brother-in-law cares about attractive, appropriate Christmas wrap even less than I do—and that’s saying something—so I put his gift in a reused gift bag I found that’s decorated in a tool motif.

My dad cares even less about attractive, appropriate Christmas wrap than my brother-in-law and me—plus he’s legally blind—so I put HIS gift in a reused gift bag I found that’s decorated in Easter eggs. Don’t tell.

1-Day #ChristmasCountdown: Afternoon

1-Day #ChristmasCountdown: Morning

When you have an inordinate amount of broken Christmas cookies and you overestimated how much frosting you’d need to decorate them, it’s a crime to waste it all

And while it’s not technically a crime to ugly-shame the Frankenstein frosted cookies you creatively—and heroically, imho—salvage from the carnage, it’s still terribly rude.

2-Day #ChristmasCountdown

3-Day #ChristmasCountdown

Downtown Cedar Rapids Coolness