It's TIme

The icicles are dripping slowly outside the window as I sit here.  My cat would have been riveted.  He could sit at the window and watch the drip...drip...drip all afternoon.  He loved Christmas, too.  The tree went up and he was ensconced under it for the duration of the season.  We still miss that cat.

We do not plan on putting up a tree this year, or on doing anything else in the way of decorating, for that matter.  The ceiling and wall painting will not be completed until a couple of days before Christmas Day so it would not be worth the work involved to decorate and then take things down three or four days later.  Usually, I like decorating so I am not giving it up forever, but things are definitely scaled back this year.  I will have our family get together, but other than the pierogis already in the freezer and two pies, everything else will be store bought.  The kids will be kind of disappointed not to see a tree at Grandma's house, but I will make a point of going to see theirs.

I made a mistake today.  I had to pick up a prescription so I decided I would do a couple of other errands.  I needed to pick up the prescription, but everything else really could have waited until next week.  I have time to go out during the week.  It seems that everyone else in the entire world has only Saturdays to be out and about.  The traffic was congested and the stores were all packed, lines everywhere.  I didn't mind that so much as the slush all over the roads and parking lots.  Everything I did involved openning and closing car doors and so I was pretty well covered with slush and road salt myself.  I should have worn my working in the yard clothes, not my going shopping clothes.

Snow is so pretty until you have the up close and personal encounters with it.  The romance dies pretty quickly.