This year we are not putting up a Christmas tree. This makes me sad. I LOVE christmas trees. As in, sometimes when I was a kid I would get up in the middle of the night, plug in the tree, and sit and just stare at it for a while. To me there are no religious connotations to it, like many other Christmas symbols (which is all well and good… if you’re Christian! But seeing a holy cross or baby jesus in a manger does nothing for this athiest). I love the lights of the tree. I love the mood.

So anyways, we are not putting up the tree this year. Partly because we are leaving in 2 weeks and won’t be here to appreciate it… and partially because our cats have a BALL climbing the tree and knocking the (plastic) ornaments all over the house. The thought of us leaving them alone with the tree for a week makes me really fear what I’d come home to. And I don’t really like the idea of putting it up for two weeks and taking it back down. So no tree. This makes me sad.

So I went out and bought a mini tree for the bedroom! (The bedroom is one of the rooms we can lock the cats out of, if you’re wondering.) It’s a green, 4′, prelit tree in a pot. I don’t care much for the pot, but who cares. It’s a tree! A pretty tree!

Of course nothing in life is easy. I got it home and half the lights worked. So I tested every single of the bad half’s bulbs – and they all worked. By themselves. But on the tree? Nope. I got very irritating when I grabbed one of the bulbs and *pop* the lights turned on. Arrgggg, half an hour spent fixing that.

I had this idea, that after we paint this room I want to put up a string of mini white lights around the ceiling. In my old bedroom, at my parents’ house, I put up a string of lights one christmas, all the way around the ceiling. It had a switch even, to make it twinkle in different patterns. And those lights never ended up coming down. (I’m actually wondering if they’re still there. I’ll be so giddy if they are!) I loved it! All year round at night I could turn on my lights and sit there under twinkles. So I’m thinking that might be a really cool thing to do in the bedroom(s?), especially considering we have no overhead light at all.

Den is giving me a weird kind of “You’re so crazy, you surprize even me sometimes” look. But what does he know? He totally doesn’t appreciate the lights. Or the tree.