In keeping with the conventions of my adopted homeland, I took down the Christmas trees yesterday.  In truth, I generally like to do it a lot earlier than mid-January, but this year I had a hard time finding the energy to deal with it all, and waiting until St. Knut’s Day seemed a better reason for leaving all the holiday trappings in place than just plain laziness.

The largest of the trees has been dismantled and tucked away only slightly less than neatly in its oversized cardboard box, and a small forest has appeared in our hallway, where it awaits removal–along with a good dozen or so boxes of decorations–to the basement.  As is invariably the way, I had much more fun taking all that stuff out than in putting it away, but in any case, it’s (mostly) done for another year.  Or ten months, I suppose;  that’s one drawback to starting early and ending late with the holiday cheer.  I was doing a bit of math in my head last night, trying to put myself to sleep, and I figured that if we put the tree up on the last day of November and take it down the 13th of January, our halls are decked for a full 12 percent of the year.  Huh.

In other news, today is Olof’s and my sixth wedding anniversary.  My gift to him was letting him sleep in while I walked Tage to school in the cold, early-morning half-light.  His to me was sweeping the snow from the car and scraping the windows before I ventured out to take Moa to the vet to have a nasty bite–she fights, apparently–checked out.  Practical considerations reign supreme here.

Oh!  I just found Petra’s DS Lite and I wasn’t even looking for it! (It was buried under a half-finished afghan that’s been taking up space on my desk for far too long.  A sign I should get busy with the crochet hook, clearly.)  All is surely right with our world now.