Welcome 2020

Well, hello to you six days into this new decade!

I didn't even think about the new year in terms of being a new decade until New Year's Eve when people started posting all sorts of decade-related things on Facebook. That made me go, "Huh. I guess it is a new decade!" Then I wondered if I had anything to say about the past decade, and it turned out, I didn't. Which is kind of sad because I would normally love doing some sort of blog post to close out a ten-year phase of my life. But it just wasn't there!

New Year is one of my favorite holidays.

I truly enjoy Christmas, and decorating for Christmas is one of my favorite things ever, but by the time Christmas rolls around, I am ready to move on and put everything away so I can ringIn the new year. This Christmas I put everything away on Christmas Day except for my tree, and the only reason I didn't get the tree put away was because I didn't want to carry it out to the shed in the dark in the snow. Instead, I batted my eyes at Scotty on the 26th and got him to do it for me. After work, of course. Because... reality.

By the way - tangent here - in 2018, I hot-glued and wired all of my tree decor to my tree so I wouldn't have to decorate it ever again. Best thing I've ever done! There was just one, little mishap with the glue:

But no big deal. Now we just carry the whole thing out to our shed and store it fully assembled. I was elated when it was time to put up my tree, and I was able to just haul it in the house and plug it in. Mind you, I had to rearrange my living room about eight different ways to make it work with the big sectional sofa we inherited over the summer.

(Scours Google photos for photo of couch)

Here's another tangent - my sister-in-law gave us the sectional, and it's actually too big for our house, so we had to leave a piece of it off. We took the extra section to Scotty's mom's house so she could have more seating in her basement. We got it stuck in her sliding glass door.

(Scours Google photos for picture of couch stuck in door)

We ended up taking the feet off and finagling the cushion a bit and eventually got it through. It's only coming back out of that house after it meets a chainsaw.

So where was I?

Oh yes, rearranging the living room to fit the tree. Our usual corner wasn't a possibility with the "new" couch. I ended up putting it in the bay window, but the tree is 7' and the ceiling over the bay window is shorter than that, so I literally just shoved it there. The top of the tree was all smooshed, but whatever. It added character.

But let's rewind to when I brought the tree in the house. I went out to the shed and got the tree, and then when I went to carry it through the garage and into the house, the garage door had blown shut. I had to set the tree down so I could open the door. The chickens were out, and they had been pooping on the patio, so when I set the tree down, it got poop on it. I carried the tree into the house, and then I had to clean the poop off the tree stand. While I was in my kitchen, cleaning poop off my tree, it occurred to me that this is not a normal problem to have. 

So back to my initial conversation... I enjoy decorating for Christmas, but I enjoy undecorating for Christmas even more and am very antsy to get it over with. I don't like Christmas to last a minute past the 25th because I'm excited to move on. So on comes New Year, and it gives me energy! I'm always excited to close the chapter on the past year and begin again. 

It also helps that it's my birthday!

(New Year's baby in the house!)

(My apologies to my parents for not getting them a tax break in 1983).

(Missed it by mere hours).

While we're discussing my birthday, let me tell you some exciting things about the day I came to this earth.

My mom went into labor on New Year's Eve. I was born at 2:29 a.m. on New Year's Day 1984. While my mom was in the hospital, her doctor came and told her that her sister-in-law had just arrived and was in labor. So later that day, my cousin Jess was born. 

Pretty cool, right?

(He came early just to steal my thunder).

All that is to say, "Happy New Year!"

I'm going resolution-free this year, but I'm excited about having a fresh start!