Busy, Busy Me

I don't know about everyone else, but I don't know if I'm coming or going right now. The first few days of December are always crazy and hectic because I like to get my decorations up as early as I can so that they can be enjoyed longer.

Poor, sweet Jeff must have walked up and down the basement steps a dozen times, at least. He took down all of the regular stuff I have sitting around and put it all in totes and took them downstairs. Then he brought up ALL of the Christmas decorations. Boy, did I ever have that "what am I going to do" feeling!

I'm slowly working my way through them. I've decorated my porch, my cedar tree in the yard and the back deck. I'm not very happy with my porch. I wanted to do something different and I used candy cane striped ribbon on my wreaths. I don't know why, it's just not tickling my fancy for some reason. I should've left the big, red, beautiful bows on there. (can you tell I miss them) Ugh. I'm not about to change it though. Who wants to put up and take down decorations twice! My cedar tree looks so cute though. We've decorated it every year we've lived here. It's growing so tall. This year I was extra careful and used very sturdy plastic hooks for the ornaments so that this wouldn't happen.

I'm thinking I'm not going to put out as much as I usually do. The reason is simple, but very silly. I get so sad when Christmas is over and you have to put it all back up. It's such a dreadful feeling. I know I'm crazy, but just knowing that when all the joy and excitement is over, you've got to work like a dog to get it all put away looms over me like a dark cloud. I asked my boys last night what was one thing that I've put out every year that they remember. Their answer wasn't good. It was the Christmas tree. A live Christmas tree. The reason it wasn't good is because I bought a fake tree last year. They hate it. I hated the mess the real tree made. All those needles on the floor made me crazy. Then they said they liked the candy cane house I've had forever. But I think the only reason they said that was because it was full of Sour Patch Kids candy canes! Which they promptly snagged two of. Boys.

So I'm sifting through my boxes of decorations and deciding what I want to use and what I'll put back in the box. I'm sure like most of you, I've got enough Christmas decorations to decorate a few houses. Seriously, I bet I've got a mile of garland. And at least two or three miles of lights. Maybe one day the boys will want some hand-me-down decorations.

Okay. On to other stuff. Monday I had lunch with the girls I work with. In my job, you don't really see the girls you work with, but you correspond so much with them, that it's nice to put a face to the name and the e-mail. We ate at Maggiano's in Buckhead. Oh, my stars. It was so beyond delicious. The food just kept coming. I look forward to going back. Maybe soon.

This is a picture of all of us. Suz and I are the two dwarves in the back.

Tuesday I had a depo in Griffin, so afterwards I decided to take a little trip to Tanger Outlet. The outlet is only about 20/30 minutes from my house, but I NEVER go. This was probably only about the fourth or fifth time I've ever shopped there. Cam goes to the Polo store quite often, but I never go. Well, after going Tuesday, Tanger Outlet will be added to my shopping repertoire. I checked a few more names off of my Christmas list.

The weather yesterday was awful. It was raining like crazy. I decided that it would be a stay-at-home day. I planned on getting lots of court reporting work done. I go in my office and sit down at my desk. And from there, it all went south. Let's see. What all did I do while I was "working"? I picked out my Christmas card picture. I ordered my Christmas card pictures. I cleaned out a box of junk. Talked to Suz about 38 times. I was having a full-blown ADD episode. Oh, and before I left my office, I decided it was high time I had a new one of these.

So I got myself ready and went out printer shopping. I've had the same HP printer since I started court reporting in 1997. It's probably printed a million pages. It's still got lots of life in it, but it just prints a little slow for me, only about 12 pages a minute. You know, patience is a virtue that I don't have. This sweet baby prints about 28 pages a minute. She and I are going to get along just fine. I hope.

We got off to a good start. I slowly took everything out of the box and followed the instructions to the letter.
For you see, assembling things isn't really something that I DO. Jeff is usually the one that takes care of those type things. Especially electronic things. I'm pretty much the village idiot when it comes to electronics.

Jeff wasn't here when I got home with the printer though. I didn't want to wait for him to get home to get it going. (Back to the patience thing again.) And besides that, I wanted to do it myself. It came in several different parts, with three different type cords. Plus you had to figure out where to put the toner.

I think HP must be dealing with an ink shortage because the instructions STUNK! Since when is an arrow pointing at something considered instruction? I mean, yeah, if you're in a hospital walking down a long hallway looking for X-ray, then an arrow would be helpful. But when you're staring at the guts of a brand-new printer wondering how to get the toner in, an arrow bites. Give me verbiage. I need words.

To my credit, I did get it all together. Ran the CD and the test page printed perfectly. And lightning fast, too, I might add. Hmmmmm. Wonder why the "configuring your product" is still running on my computer 17 hours later!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! But don't look in the instructions for an answer. They'll only give you an arrow.

I'm excited because tonight Suz and I are taking Alayna to see the Rockettes at the Fox. I've never seen them before and can't wait.

I hope it won't disappoint me like the Nutcracker did. Hopefully, it'll be fast paced. I know. I know. I need to ask Santa to bring me a nice big box full of PATIENCE.

Till next time! Have a great Thursday.