Setting up the Christmas Tree

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Yes, I realize it's only November 14th. But we have a party on the 5th and the next 2 weekends are jam packed with jewellery shows, family intros, baking day with Jen, that I had to get this done this weekend. Tomorrow I work outside. And it's going to be about 14 degrees celsius. Or about 56 degrees Farenheit. Too warm for this.

So Barry was good enough to help me haul things out of storage. I had forgotten how brutal we were with getting rid of stuff we'll never use again. Oh well.

So while Barry was busy cleaning up downstairs, I put the tree up and white lights on. That was sad. The poor tree looked a little forlorn. So we went out and bought more lights...multicoloured this time. MUCH better. I was fine doing all that.

And then came the ornaments. Of course Barry was no where to be found ... downstairs actually, and he was working on something else. This is the second year without my mom. The last, I put up the tree and tried not to think about her. Christmas was a total non-event last year. We had our traditional breakfast and opened gifts (just the 2 of us) but otherwise hide from the day. I just couldn't deal with it last year. Mom died at the end of August and Christmas was her favourite time of the year. So I wimped out and ignored the day.

This year is supposed to be the exact opposite. Going up north to my sister's on Christmas Eve and returning Boxing Day, weather permitting. Her daughter and 2 grandsons live with her. The boys are almost 4. Barry and I have never spent Christmas with children. 17 years together and we've never had Christmas with children. How sad.

So there I was, listening to an assortment of music on my laptop (there's 1,334 songs on there ... yeesh) and putting up the ornaments on the tree. I was just fine with most of them because they're pretty recent. It was the ones that I had given mostly my mom, several to both my parents, that was the hard part. And it was the family ornaments that have been around for years ... they're the only real history on that tree. It's a very different style of tree than when my mom was around. It's much cleaner, no garland of any kind, it's all kinda generic for the most part.

I'm sitting here looking at the tree, and it's a nice tree, it looks good, Barry's happy with it. I'm ok with it. But something's missing. I just don't know what.

I really miss my mom.