Twelve days, part 1

I'm not a huge fan of Christmas for the normal reasons (too commercial, too religious in a way that doesn’t suit me, too much shopping, too many tired miserable mothers trying to please everyone), plus it’s just so dark at this time of year. Truly, it is light-ish for a short short while between about 9 am and 3 pm. I know, we score in June, when, if you put on your raingear and are able to stay up late enough, the lights on my tree will be even more stunning than pictured below, if you can fathom that.

But I thought I’d try to celebrate the season better than I did last year, when my only nod to Christmas was to pick a branch up from the side of the road where it fell in a windstorm, and decorate it with tinsel and lights. This year, I’m trying to be more festive, beginning right now, by celebrating all of the gifts, real and imagined.

It turns out I have a bit of catching up to do. I’ll try to do 12 days; we’ll see if that pans out.

On Sunday, which I think will turn out to be Day 2, depending on whether I do any back tracking to consider R.'s sports injury, I received my first actual gift, a bracelet and some tree decorations from Joey. R and I picked him up hitchhiking the other day and he immediately gave me the gifts, which I will photograph later. I know! R. thinks it’s ridiculous to get excited about this because a) I don't usually wear plastic wreath jewelry, and b) well, R. seemed to think he was going to give those particular gifts to whomever picked him up, which may be true, but didn’t lessen it in any way. I am unable to fit into the tiny Christmasy bracelet.