After

I miss my Christmas tree.

I walked past my living room and it's a black hole. A ugly black hole. I saw an ugly black hole full of ugly boxes. Technically my decorations are still in the room, they're just boxed up. Last year I worried about the tree making it through another year, this year I worry about the box. It's falling apart and in worse shape than the tree. The tree will is going to be fine next year but I'm afraid I'm going to have to get a new box.

Do they sell new boxes? Can you buy a Christmas tree box without having to buy a Christmas tree? I don't like the bag things they do sell, I think my tree needs the discipline of a real box. It can be very hardheaded sometimes.

Last week at this time I had a glowing jewel in my living-room. It was beautiful, it was like a huge piece of jewelry. Really expensive jewelry. Rubies, emeralds, some diamonds, an armadillo... True, it would have been a huge piece of jewelry, borderline tasteful, perhaps a large brooch - No! a display piece! And it made my whole house nicer,It made life nicer.

It made me spend time in my living-room and not just because my TV is there - I spent time in there without the TV being on! On purpose! And it wasn't just the tree either, it was the mantel mantelpiece , it was the cards and the stockings and the creche' - Duh! The creche' is still up! My little animal collection volunteered to hang out with it and they camouflaged it through the great boxing up over the weekend. Now that I think about it, that box is shot too. I know they don't sell replacement boxes for creche' sets.

I would think there would be a whole industry dedicated to replacement boxes. Boxes have limited life spans and they fail, years before whatever they hold give up the ghost. Christmas tree's for instance, I mean you have a 7.5 foot tree, its a lot like the other 7.5 foot trees and while they aren't interchangeable some are fuller than others, branch configuration varies, but still, interchangeable boxes should be available to the public. I shouldn't have to thinking about buying a whole new tree just because my box is shredded.

Sigh. You know, the boxes are still down stairs, I could put everything back up... I don't know. Maybe if I turned the lights on in that room or opened the blinds it would be less black hole-y. I could turn on the TV, switch the fireplace on, break out the fuzzy jammies, curl up with my remote, bring the dog up and get back to normal. I'm nextflixing Sex and The City the whole series. I think I'll get used to my living-room again by the time I find out which one is actually a man. I've watched the first season and I think at least one of them is a man. There's the man one, the virgin one, the pinhead one and the Sara Jessica Parker one.