Organization is not conducive to creativity

Overall, I’m doing better on Christmas this year. I bought the fresh (appropriate size) wreath for my front door on Dec. 7th, my tree is up and decorated and some gifts have been purchased. I know that compared to a lot of folks, I’m way behind. If I am compared to me last year, however, I’m way ahead of the game. Last year, everything was such an ordeal – take, for example, my horrendous 2006 wreath:

December 18, 2006

Know what happens when you wait until Dec. 16th to buy your fresh Christmas wreath? You end up with one of the two remaining ginormous, dried-out wreaths from Lakewood Gardens. Even though they gave it to me for half price, it was still expensive. Installed on the front door, it touches the doorknob. You cannot close the door from the inside because it’s impossible the shove the branches back outside.

So what happens is:

Doorbell
Cursing
Open door
Me: “Well hello, (inconsiderate neighbor bearing gift) do come in. Could you wait here just a second?”
Run to open the kitchen door (the one with sleigh bells attached to the doorknob) and push button to raise garage door.
Zip past assh, er, neighbor to close front wreath from the outside.
Run around to garage scooping up pissed off cat that I forgot was in the garage and is starting to slink towards freedom.
Come in through kitchen door trying to protect face and throat from cat (effing sleigh bells).
Me: Dropping cat, “pant…pant…wheeze…egg nog?”
Asshole: “Nice wreath.”

Gosh, after reading that again, this Christmas seems pretty boring. Come to think of it, my family got a kick out of my incompetence last year. It was such a terrible year that by the time Christmas came around, we’d decided to just embrace the lunacy (but Erni wriggled free).