0 Holiday Decor (Scrapes and Bruises)

It's that time of year: Christmas trees, wreaths, lights, and stockings by the fireplace.

I enjoy the decorations, but also like the fact my wife and I get to sit at home with the cats on Christmas Day. I like a nice, quiet holiday together. This time of year, I avoid the malls, try not to stare at blinking lights, and generally sit at home and enjoy the warmth.

Holidays can be painful, apparently.

While stringing the lights above our garage, I managed to skin both knees. Shingles are rough. I wonder why, since there's really no need for them to be sandpaper. My wife wonders how I skinned my knees through jeans. I don't know. I'm also unsure how I bruised my legs in two places. At least I do know the origin of a bruise on my right am — I slammed into a doorway, missing the opening by two or three inches.

Despite the injuries, I am pondering buying and hanging another string of lights. Maybe some "icicle" lights would look nice over the garage door.

We need something in the yard, but I dislike those inflated things. There are many tacky decorations we don't need in our yard. A house not far from us has hundreds of plastic things in the yard. These aren't an organized, planned arrangement. It is as if the owners purchased one or two of every tacky lawn ornament at a discount store and stuck them in the grass. Maybe they visited garage sales and thrift stores, too.

I might write an essay about the plastic flamingo I saw at Walmart. It had a "Santa cap" — which I suppose makes it a Christmas lawn ornament.

We like order and tradition. Our two trees are color-coordinated and classic. No strange colors or tacky decorations based on movies or television shows. Why does anyone want a talking Darth Vader ornament on a Christmas tree?