Ding, Ding, Ding, DING!

This is a very important weekend! I have to get the dogs picture with Santa done, get his cards taken care of, bag  all the cookies, decide how many each person gets,  and get them boxed-addressed-prepared for mailing. I also want to get the rest of the Christmas decos taken care of.  Oh, and I might want to vacuum the front yard again.

I did get the secondary tree for the office window accomplished - I looked at Wallyworld but they were all too thin and I wanted a tree that had the same silhouette as the main tree. I all ready have a second tree for the office window but its way too thin and last year I didn't like it and it never looked right. The new tree is shorter but fuller and it pleases my sense of  symmetry much better - it does need more lights though, but I can handle that.

So this weekend I just have to get the dog photographed with Santa successfully, make a quicky card, do the whole dog cookie process, decorate the house to my satisfaction, wrap gifts damn it, do laundry and possibly vacuum the yard. In two days.

No pressure.

In honor of pressure, I present, in English for a change, the highest pressure Christmas carol ever written. 

Hark! how the bells

Sweet silver bells

All seem to say,

"Throw cares away."

Christmas is here

Bringing good cheer

To young and old

Meek and the bold

Ding, dong, ding, dong

That is their song

With joyful ring

All caroling

One seems to hear

Words of good cheer

From ev'rywhere

Filling the air

Oh how they pound,

Raising the sound,

O'er hill and dale,

Telling their tale,

Gaily they ring

While people sing

Songs of good cheer

Christmas is here

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas

Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas

On, on they send

On without end

Their joyful tone

To ev'ry home

And here it is in German, a super high pressure language or that might just be my high school German class PTSD coming out - In German I imagine that this carol regularly makes peoples heads explode. 

Kling, Glockchen, klinglingeling, 
Kling, Glockchen, kling! 
LaBt mich ein, ihr Kinder, 
Ist so kalt der Winter, 
Offnet mir die Turen, 
LaBt mich nicht erfrieren. 
Kling, Glockchen, klinglingeling, 
Kling, Glockchen, kling! 

Kling, Glockchen, klingelingeling, 
Kling, Glockchen, kling! 
Madchen hort und Bubchen, 
Macht mir auf das Stubchen, 
Bring euch dran erlaben. 
Kling, Glockchen, klingelingeling, 
Kling, Glockchen, kling! 

Kling, Glockchen, klingelingeling, 
Kling, Glockchen, kling! 
Hell ergluhn die Kerzen! 
Will drin wohnen frohlich, 
Frommes Kind, wie selig! 
Kling, Glockchen, klingelingeling, 
Kling, Glockchen, kling!

We didn't learn this in class because that song has a lot of rapid German and we couldn't speak that fast, instead we learned Silent Night, much easier lyrics that could be sung in the speed we could understand what we were saying, and its mostly all German as a second language friendly present tense. Our very disturbed teacher was so happy with our progress in class that she had the German club go door to door one night growling it at people. It was not very festive and the  Nach was quite Stille. No silver bells at play at all.