The Tyranny and Joy of Stuff

Does it count if I *think* about blogging Holidaily? I started to write about 'stuff' and gifts and all that a few days ago. I decided to go back in the archives and read about, well, stuff from the past. This was fun but led to no new writing. This picture is of one section of a vitrine table in our living room. It has some old bendable toys in it. (Including a pipe cleaner version of me, created by a friend.) I collected bendables very actively for a while and decorated my office with them when I worked. Our Christmas decorations are, to a large extent, bendable Christmas figures. Santas, mostly, but also a few reindeer, snowmen, trees and such.

I've been working on my financial life. And that is boring. I have to prepare certain tax documents in January and have been running those numbers. I am preparing a new budget for the new year so that we can bust that budget by eating out too much, traveling too much, giving away too much and, of course, buying too many books.

We really don't want too much stuff. It mostly gets in the way. Of course, I do enjoy looking at all the little Santas and such this time of year and enjoying the pretty glassware and such all the time. But, of course, there is the dusting. You have to dust stuff.

That's all I've got. Tomorrow I'm going to talk about gifts. Gifts given. Gifts gotten. Successes. Maybe some failures.

Progress

I feel like I should always have a picture with these entries. Since I'm not posting an entry of my black eye, I just added this picture with my husband in the lobby of the Fairmont where there are giant nutcrackers, apparently made from cake and macarons. Pushing the boundaries of gingerbread creations, I guess.

I was a little bit productive today. I tidied up and cleaned some surfaces that I was going to put decorations on. I got decorations out of storage but didn't do anything with them. Other than that, I've just eaten (lunch: tortilla with chicken, cheese, guac, and hot sauce and half a banana; dinner: soup and a grilled cheese sandwich). And read papers and watched TV. Oh, and I've checked out the progress of my black eye (it gets worse before better, right, although the swelling is gone).

And that's about it. And I'm going to go back to the TV and newspapers.

Oh...and I pulled out the leaf in the dining table and got out a jigsaw puzzle. Because it's a holiday tradition, damn it!

Decorations of Red

The columns supporting the Long Center ring are decorated for Christmas.

The Visible Woman...doesn't decorate.

There are two stacks of holiday cards on the little desk in our living area (kitchen/dining/living). One is cards from people. One is cards from businesses or charities. For a while we had them on the counter between the kitchen and dining room until there were too many and I also had to go through them to make sure I'd sent cards to people who sent them to me.

On the same little desk are three holiday presents. Gift bags with tissue. Two have Texas Christmas ornaments as decoration. One is for FFP. The others are for the friends who have included us in family Christmas.

Otherwise, there is no decoration here. Nothing to remind of the season, nothing to take down when it's over.

Down in our 40-square-foot storage cage are some boxes or bins with Christmas stuff. Nothing like a fake tree or a bunch of glass balls or strings of lights. No. Instead there are many, many bendable, posable Christmas figures. Mostly Santas with some trees, reindeer, elves and such thrown in for good measure. See here. There are so many (plus a few other decorative things) that I really could make this place look like Christmas. I think I even did it one year. But I find no evidence of it. The decorations remain in that cage, somewhere behind the ironing board, the piles of cleaning supplies and paper goods and the file boxes of archives and such.

Maybe next year. Maybe I'll decorate and have a little Christmas cocktail party.

But this year I enjoyed the decorations of others. From the tree at Rockefeller Center and the shop windows on Fifth and Madison in New York to the fun of candy cane columns at the Long Center and Christmas trees and fantastic gingerbread structures at the local hotels. Decorations are nice but I just can't seem to be bothered to do them myself. Today we go to a party at a club we belong to downtown. I'll probably take a camera and snap some pictures of their great decorations.

But I feel for my little bendable fellows down in the parking structure in the dark.

All Decked Out

The Visible Woman...opines. 

Don't you think that there is an escalation of decoration? I took the picture above in New York last year when we visited to see the post-Thanksgiving decoration. It was part of a Bergdorf Goodman display.Things just keep getting more and more elaborate until perhaps it is the simplest thing that will intrigue us.

Well, That's That, Isn't It?

There I am, snapping a shop window on Second as if I live in the neighborhood. Of course, I've lived here, more or less, since June 2. But now I don't have another home to go to for showers, TV, the occasional sleep and sorting, sifting, tossing, cleaning, tossing, freting. Most of the 'stuff' that survived is tucked into this place, the 43 square foot storage unit in the parking garage or at our parents' houses. And a lot of it still needs a bit of sifting. And organizing. We haven't completely lost anything (that I know of) except for a remote to a DVD/VCR that I bet shows up if I go through everything. Which I will. One day. Meanwhile, I'm going to try to get this place finished with all the lights, AV and shades we want installed. And buy a few more things (or get them delivered). And then WHAT? You tell me.

What Makes a Home?

What makes a home anyway? We've been 'living' in the condo off and on, mostly on, since June 2. Almost two months.

I guess if you have a working kitchen, shower, bed then you can make a home.

The kitchen was reasonably functional the day we moved in. We brought some pots and pans, glasses, plates, silverware and a coffee maker. It wasn't long before we decided we had to move our favorite coffee maker. The refrigerator, stove, microwave, disposal, etc. were all functional.

For seating we had the movers bring a card table and Costco folding chairs as well as our ultimate 'sitting and reading and watching TV' chairs from our old bedroom. Yesterday the bar stools, chairs, table and console you see above were delivered. They'd been in the warehouse a while because we thought they were a bit fragile to have around while cabinet makers drug in hundreds of pieces of wood of varying sizes up to about twelve feet long. We still have to have lighting guys come in with lengths of track and anchor drills for sag support. And big screens TVs to be delivered. But we couldn't wait any longer. I feared the stuff would disappear from the warehouse. And a card table and folding chairs just didn't cut it any more.

We slept on the sofa bed until Monday when, our custom platform bed having been delivered, we got the new mattress. If you enlarge the picture above you can just see that the bedroom is finally not empty save a massage chair and a lamp. Who knows when that new sofa bed will be opened up again? We like to say that the Extended Stay America on Sixth is our guest room.

Really things are functional now. We need office chairs and lighting desparately. We would enjoy better sound and TV. Although a Bose, a 19inch LCD and the right attitude have gone a long way towards entertaining us. Not to mention the scores of bars and restaurants within walking distance of our front door.