We Have Normality

Well, its all over, the Chrissy decorations are away for another year. They would have been down yesterday if not for the fact that it was about 35C and humid, and it's just not worth wrestling a 6' tree in that kind of heat just for the sake of having it away on the right day.

The fur squad are rather disgruntled about the whole deal, they were very enthusiastic about the ritual taking of the ornaments from the tree, but were decidedly miffed when said ornaments wound up in a box and the lid went on. There was the last ditch chewing of the tree as it went into the box, and even an attempted stowing away, and of course the swiping of the last ball ornament and playing four-paw soccer from one end of the (admittedly small) house to the other and back again until it was confiscated.

I have faith that I have not seen the last of the ornaments, I am sure there are several lying hidden around the house waiting to be found. The tree looked quite sad in the end, with its strings of silver beads half pulled off and gaps in the decorations. I lost count of the number of ornaments the girls appropriated, mainly because as soon as they managed to get them off the tree they would get them as far away as they could, making a tally difficult. They love batting the balls around the place, but they were quick to discover that the real fun lay in the cheap little fake pressies and drum kits, I kept wondering why I was finding little cubes of styrofoam, and what looked like silver chocolate wrappers around the house, and then I saw one of them at it. Suki would single out a pressie ornament to take from the tree, take it into the next room, and proceed to unwrap it! It must have been so disappointing for her that they all contained the same thing, but she is nothing if not persistent. They have also disassembled a number of little drum kits. This is why you should always give pets a Christmas present, if you don't, they'll pick their own! I imagine that I will be throwing out lots of stray ornament bits over the next few days.

Despite the number of disassembled ornaments, I discovered today that my collection has reached critical mass: what fitted in one box last year, is now flowing over into several. I don't begrudge the girls the ornaments they took, as they limited themselves to the cheap 'my first Christmas' stuff, which was really just filler anyway, and from the look of how much I've acquired since the tree went up, wouldn't have made it out next year anyway.