December, first week.

Let's see...... there are hundreds of thousands of lady-bugs flying around outside, the antique roses are in bloom between the cottage and the barn, we're enjoying sunny 80-degree Spring-like days, and I've nearly killed myself trying to make the Christmas tree in our dining room look like a tree I saw in one of my Christmas magazines.  Note to self, and to those otherwise interested:  Christmas magazines can be hazardous to one's health.

The onslaught of the lady-bugs started on the day my husband brought home the antique Oriental desk.... millions of lady-bugs all over the front porch columns, all over the front door.... it looked as if the front of the house was covered in polka-dots.  I sprayed the front door with Bengal Gold (the best bug-spray you can buy without a prescription) and, I'm sorry to say, there were lots of dead lady-bugs. (I've since learned they're really some kind of Asian beetle, but they sort of resemble lady-bugs with the dots on their backs, but the bugs are more orange than red.)  These bugs are also all over the porches of friends up and down this road..... every one of us thought we had cornered the lady-bug market till we started asking around.

The weather has been so glorious that all the antique roses are in bloom again..... I'm thinking of cutting bunches of those red roses and laying them on the branches of the big Christmas tree.... (yet another magazine page; another recipe for possible disaster).

Killing myself........ we put up the big tree over the weekend.  My husband did the lights, and that one-inch-from-the-ceiling Noble Fir is filled with vintage figural and bubble-lights. I did all the ornaments.... a couple of hundred blown-glass confections, some very old, some new-but-looking-vintage....... no tinsel, no garland.... but wide red and gold ribbons, cut into foot-long strips and they're peeking out from just beyond the tips of the branches. If a ribbon could dance on a tree, that's what it would look like.

However....... when I thought I was finished with the peeking-out strips of ribbons, I noticed one branch near the top of the that ten-foot tree... it was ribbon-less.  Can't have that, now can we?  I cut one more strip of ribbon, got back up on the little step-stool..... and down I came, taking three glass ornaments with me (the one landing on the wood floor shattered, the two that landed on the tree-skirt survived).  Along with the three ornaments that came off the tree, most of those perfectly placed ribbon strips fell to the floor as well.  I landed on the area rug, a nice thick wool, but still, when you fall more than six inches, you're going to feel the hardness of the floor beneath the rug.  I think the stool hit me on the shin of my left leg and the back of the knee on my right leg.... both spots are sporting little bumps and will probably turn black and blue just in time for our Christmas party.

I sat there on the floor yelling out for my husband....... he was in the garage, cleaning and sorting and organizing, in hopes of being on Santa's Good List.  As always, when I'm screaming because of bugs or snakes or mishaps of any kind--- no one hears me.  I've told my husband that the words on my headstone should read "I guess you didn't hear me screaming."-- which is what I've always said to him when I pick myself up, or gather my wits about me after a snake sighting or a country-calamity of some sort.

I think I was more upset about the broken ornament and the scattered ribbons this morning than I was about falling off of the step-stool.  As I sat there trying to make sure that I hadn't broken a leg or an arm, I had this glorious oh-my-moment about my character.... what will eventually end my life on this planet will be my desire to make everything in my little corner of the world as perfectly perfect as it can possibly be.  (As in...... She died suddenly and tragically because one branch of her Christmas tree was ribbon-less, poor thing.)

And, of course, as soon as I realized that none of my bones were broken, I got out the vacuum cleaner to take away the shattered remnants of that ornament, plus the hundreds of little needles that came off the tree branch that I must have grabbed on the way towards the floor..... and then I put back all those ribbons, including the one that was missing from that branch near the top.  My little corner of the world is once again perfectly perfect, except for the black and blue bumps on each of my legs.