Dropping the Holiday Ball
Here we are, smack dab at the start of the Holiday Season and I have moved into a decorator show house neighborhood. Don’t get me wrong, I love everything about this season, from halloween popcorn balls straight through to cold cut sandwiches and football on New Years’ day. I love it all, except the decorating.
Oh, I have skills-usually. In fact, I love and embrace interior decorating so much that I have been rearranging furniture and treating walls and windows since I was I was old enough to plaster Teen Beat pictures over my bed-in a creative tapestry fashion of course.
But for some reason, when it comes to Holiday decorating I have a pronounced deficiency. Some of it may come from my aversion to tchotchke. I fall somewhere near the minimalist side of the spectrum. I do like a knick-knack here and there, but figurines and fake flowers tend to stress me out. I also move, a lot, and the thought of packing boxes full of gauzy ghosts and fake spider webs is more than I can handle. So I don’t buy the stuff. Therefore, I don’t decorate.
No one has ever minded until this year when our neighborhood looks like the cover of a Pottery Barn Fall catalog. Every house around us is decked out in skeletons and perfectly carved jack-o-lanterns. We all enjoy walking through the streets of Halloween Central, but then we come to our sad little house and all I can think is, maybe the kids will think we’re going for dark and creepy.
I tried this year to carve a pumpkin because the little people finally wore me down with their pleas for me to step it up and join the neighbors. It was pretty crooked and funny looking up close, but passable on our front porch. I was proud. For three days. Then this happened.
Three days! Who has a pumpkin that totally rots after three days? If I had any doubt that I should not be decorating before, this is my sign. Sorry kids, you’ll have to enjoy the hay and dried corn next door. My seasonal decorating days are over. I’ll stick to colored leaf table runners and holly scented candles from this day forward.
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