‘Tis the season of chaos, yes?
Oof. Sorry. I shall be good and keep my Scrooge-esque attitude to myself.
Ahem.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, yes? (Typed with perk and glee)
The music (which gets stuck in your head and eats bandwidth you don’t have to give, and you can’t even sing along if you wanted to because it’s all five octaves too high).
The food (someone has to cook and do the dishes—we all know how I feel about that).
The crowds of happy people shopping for treasures (please, please, don’t make me do this).
Welp.
Fell off that “be good” bandwagon rather quickly, didn’t I?
Sarcasm aside, I really am trying to give things a good-hearted attempt at… enjoying it? Or at the very least, tolerating the holidays this year. Turns out being Scrooge about Grandma’s demise at the hooves of that psychotic reindeer takes as much energy as being tolerant.
The Hubs, however, loves the season. Long ago when the kids were little, I dubbed him “in charge of” decorations. That part is in quotes because I will veto things from time to time. And because on 12/26 I oversee dismantling said decorations so fast that the Rubbermaid totes and the attic ladder wince at the pine branch purge.
For a couple of years, I talked him into leaving the regular tree in the attic, and we switched to the tiniest of trees—Charlie Brown would be sympathetic. It was about two feet tall with one tiny strand of lights. Maybe room for five or six bobbles. If (when) the cats knocked it over, it was easy to put upright.
But the Hubs could tolerate such meagreness no longer. A couple of seasons ago, he bought a pre-lit tree. Like a kid in a candy store, he was.
Or an adult male in the Christmas clearance section.
This year, he put up this tree over Thanksgiving weekend, thrilled that the pre-lit lights still worked. While he worked on that, I did the non-Scrooge thing and put the garland up on the mantle. Just a few bobbles.
I stood back to look at the space. The garland has white lights that stay on. None of that psychedelic blinking.
I turned to the Hubs’ progress. His pre-lit tree blinked white. Then turned multicolored, then blinked. Then twinkled. Then cycled through blinking, white, and colors and twinkled and blinked.
“You’ve got it on the store display settings,” I declared, and went for the cord to end the chaos.
“I like the colored lights,” he said.
“But the mantle is white,” I point out. But his face is pouty. So, I swallow my attitude and find the setting on the cord that makes the colored lights stay on.
“I like them to blink,” he says.
I swallow again and find the setting, quite proud that I’m cooperating on such an impressive level.
The tree blinked its colored lights for days. Even after Malachi Maxwell, our most needy of felines, got stuck in the tree, wailing that one of his razor beans was being held hostage by an angry clump of pine needles.
Then this morning, I’m at the table trying to eat breakfast. Drink my tea. Write something.
And I’m… disturbed.
It’s the tree.
The blasted tree is back to display settings. Twinkle. Blink. White. Color. It can’t make up its mind, so it cycles through them all at random.
I abandon my scrambled eggs. My tea goes cold. The writing doesn’t take flight like I hope it will because I’m trying to find the pattern in the display settings.
But I can’t. There’s no rhyme or reason to what the tree is doing.
“Why is it doing this?”
Did the cats get into a fight over the cord and hit the reset button? We have a power surge? Am I being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Whenever to teach me how to truly not be a Scrooge?
Little Miss lands on the table next to the laptop, crosses her chonky legs under her, and stares at the lights with me.
“I am this tree,” I say, rather flatly. “This is what it’s like in my head.”
“You beat me to the punch.” Little Miss is proud that I’ve landed on a self-deprecatory observation without her input.
I must appear to others to be glitching. I can operate on one setting for a stretch—be that days or minutes—then Bam! Glitching, blinking, twinkling, and all the colors. No apparent rhyme or reason.
Did a cat run over the button on my cord?
Did I have a power surge?
Did the Ghost of Christmas Whenever run its icy finger down my spine and criss-cross my circuitry?
Whatever the reason (there are layers upon layers of potential reasons), it appears I’ve reverted to display settings. Programming that has been running for years is gone, replaced by every possible alternative in rapid-fire succession. Then repeat.
Stick a star on my head and plop me in a downtown shop window. The sight is sure to draw in customers.
Little Miss stomps on the button with her lavender stilettos, and the tree ceases its disco routine. The lights settle into a soft, steady glow. “Just needed a reset.”
This time of year, I think it’s safe to say everyone hits display mode a time or two. We glitch. We fuss over twinkling, blinking, or rapid-cycling through every option.
But if my good buddy Scrooge can turn it around in a night with three unpaid spirit-therapists, perhaps I can survive my “somewhat good-hearted attempt at holiday spirit” with a few fish, three cats, and a mouthy Muse stomping on my reset button.
