It's funny how when school suddenly ends, you find yourself with all this extra time you never knew existed. I am done with school for the semester/year and I'm way happy about this. And, tomorrow night will be the very last performance of Miracle on 34th Street and after that, I'm going to have more free time than I know what to do with!
Today I killed some of my free time by going to lunch with my mom, Granny, and sister at KBobs and then I went back with my sister to her place of work to decorate for the holidays! She works as a secretary at Robin Blair's office and her Fridays are typically a bit slower than the rest of the week so today seemed like a great day to make the office more Christmas-y.
My sister, Emmy, had brought some extra Christmas ornaments from home and had dug a tiny Christmas tree (complete with a tiny string of lights and a few ornaments!) and a very old string of lights (the price sticker on the box reads "Coast-to-Coast"!) out from the depths of a back closet. We set the tiny tree out in the waiting room on a small table and plugged in it's tiny string of lights and then we ran the Coast-to-Coast string of lights along the top of her desk, where they sit blinking in strange patterns. Pleased with our handiwork, we decided to spread Christmas cheer further back in the building and proceeded to cover a large plant in Mr. Blair's office with small, red ornaments. Mr. Blair was not there at the time, so he will have a surprise in his office on Monday morning.
After that, Emmy got kind of busy with office work but I continued to decorate. Emmy had brought a bunch of huge, really cool ornaments in from home and I wasn't about to let them go to waste. The building has the kind of ceilings that are made of uniform panels of porous board with metal in between, you know, often seen in public schools? Anyway, this kind of ceiling is great for hanging things from the metal- you can kind of tuck it up under the board and it stays put, perfect for Emmy's ornaments! However, I quickly ran into problems. Both Emmy and I are on the short side so neither of us could get anywhere near the ceiling on our own. Thanks to my mom's counsel (she used to work there) we found a step stool buried in a corner. I excitedly dragged it from it's hiding place and clambered up-- only to find I was still about three inches short. However, Emmy found a huge, ancient dictionary that did the trick. As she worked, Emmy looked on in amusement and worry as I precariously hung ornaments from the ceiling. Looking back, it was sort of a ridiculous situation, but I must say, the end result was fabulous!
However, as nice as all the aforementioned decorating was, there was one other adornment that was both Emmy's and my favorite: on the wall of the waiting room there is a huge pair of horns -ox, bull, yak, whatever- that now sport several bright, Christmasy ornaments (I call them hornaments) on each tip! The contrasting tough, masculine, intimidating horns and the bright, sparkly, girly ornaments is truly breathtaking.
At the end of the day, after admiring all of our decorations, Emmy and I stood together in the waiting room, staring up at the horns.
"It's very Christmas-in-New-Mexico," I said.
She cocked her head to the side, examining the hornaments. "Do you think it's too much?" she inquired.
There was silence for a brief moment, then we glanced at each other. "Nahhh," we said in unison.
It may seem strange, but today really put me in the Christmas spirit. I guess being so involved with school and the play and with all the unseasonably warm weather, it just didn't really seem like Christmas but now that I'm not so busy and with all the great snowy weather, I'm starting to enjoy this holiday time of year.
Plus, in about two days, I'll be twenty-one. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't at all excited. I don't really know why, though. I've never been much of a gambler and ever since the scarring experience of taking a swig of my mom's beer instead of my milk at age four or so, I've never been much of a drinker, but still. Just a big milestone, I guess.
Otis is doing her impatient-sighing thing again, so it must be bedtime. Good night!
Sarah
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