A late start on Christmas...

... and I can hear you laughing now.  I just started wrapping Christmas gifts this morning, which is about a month behind schedule for me. I shop all year long for Christmas and birthday gifts, and then keep them tagged and waiting in a closet until it's time for wrapping and mailing. With Christmas gifts, I usually start wrapping in late August, and before our Halloween party comes around, my Christmas gifts are boxed and ready to mail out during Thanksgiving week, way before the Christmas Rush at the post office is even a gleam in the post-master's eye.  In late August of this year, however, my mind and my heart was still back in England... and Christmas gifts and wrapping just didn't come to mind until I saw the Christmas decor going up in the little shops in town. Seems that now the retailers put out Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas things together so the three holidays are melded into a three-month long celebration.

I've found that once the Halloween decorations come down and the Christmas decorations go up during the first week of November, the rest of that month and all of December just disappears in a heart-beat. And I like to enjoy the month of December and read my Christmas books, plus we always have a Christmas party... who has time for wrapping and boxing and mailing with all of that going on?

This Christmas should be interesting with Savannah here... a new puppy who has never seen a Christmas tree or any other sort of holiday decoration, for that matter.  My husband went to the store today and bought two extra stuffed monkey toys for her... a duplicate of her favorite blue monkey, and one in brown. I'll probably wrap up the blue one for her and put it under the tree for Christmas. By that time, the current blue monkey will probably be too nasty to even toss in the washing machine.  I'm hoping that Savannah will unwrap her gift the way our dog Gracie used to.  And I'm hoping that Savannah will be as good with the Christmas decorations as she has been with the Halloween decorations. I think she's afraid of the Halloween tree in the living room... maybe too much black and purple in and on that tree for her liking?

My reading time has been cut short because of all the time with and attention to Savannah. Walking and playing and teaching her to sit and stay, and then the constant mopping up of the kitchen floor around her water bowl. I've never seen a dog plunge half of its head into a bowl in order to take a drink of water. The result of that method is a small tsunami along that part of the kitchen floor surrounding her bowl.

We've met the new people who moved in across the road... they have a young man living there who is the best friend of their son... he asked the ladies at last week's Waldorf Wednesday Tea if anyone needed help around the house or yard. We thought we were hearing things and I guess we appeared too anxious because I think he immediately regretted his offer. (None of us around here has had such great luck with handymen of any kind or any age.)  My husband has met this young man and has already scheduled a day for him to come here and do some yard work.

With all the ridiculous experiences we've had with such people, I'm not holding out any shred of hope this time.... but we'll see. How bad can it possibly be? We know right where he lives if he doesn't show up. He does seem very nice, though, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this arrangement works out well for us and for all the other neighbors on our road. As always, hope floats.