Oh Christmas Tree

With sighing carols playing everywhere you go, you simply can't miss the beginning of December over here. Shops compete to come up with the glitziest storefronts while towering evergreens laden with shiny baubles start cropping up on almost every street corner.

Damn, you mean it's Christmas already?

And it's time for me to clean off the dust on the boxes from last year and unearth my own tree to set up in Netherfield. Obsessive compulsives like me would know what a pain it is to keep the Christmas baubles every year - and what a bigger pain it is to unpack the box the year after. Inevitably, some helpful but thoroughly bumbling hand would let slip a precious trinket made of Murano hand-blown glass.

And then those same clumsy hands would turn the already horribly entangled, knotted and tortuous twinkly lights into an impossible Gordian knot that would surely frustrate me for hours. Or place all the decorations on a particularly fortunate branch leaving glaringly empty spaces bereft of glad tidings.

So yes, I do silently grinch to myself every year about decorating the tree - but though I frequently bemoan the pronounced lack of help, I still suffer through it all on my own. Obviously finicky micromanaging control freaks like me simply can't stand by while someone else does a poor job of the tree.

Calvin : I can help put up the tree. 
Paul : Sure, no problem. Go ahead. 
Calvin : You sure? You're not just saying that?
Paul : Yes, take some of these and go hang them. Heck, you can take the entire box.
Calvin : Hmm... you're just going to wake up in the middle of the night and move everything around, aren't you?
Paul : You know me too well.

This year though rather than the pink paper cranes I did for Netherfield before, I shall rely on green paper wheels to form a theme. Maybe even a hanging mobile from the chandelier. Perhaps even mini paper wheels to clip on my coat.

Hmm... maybe I do need some handy elves for that.

And that's only for the first of my Christmas trees.