I had an over-reaction to Christmas lights—and actually, already, mid-sentence, I want to go back and say it was NOT an over-reaction, and I am not sorry, and I was right.

If you use and like LED lights, I would like to warn you that you may find yourself getting a little protective of your lights during this post. I am going to use judgement words such as “right” and “wrong” and “ruin Christmas.” Normally when I write a post like this, where I know for sure that my view is subjective and other subjective opinions are just as valid, I temper my vocabulary to reflect that knowledge. And as each sentence unfurled, I attempted to do this, but I could not do it FULLY—not without tempering the strength of FEELING. So you will have to know, as you read, that I KNOW that LED lights are almost certainly morally and ethically superior; and that I KNOW that many people like them and even PREFER them to incandescents; and that I know that they are not wrong to feel that way because this is only about PREFERENCE and I know that; and that I KNOW that LED lights are great in many ways, such as that you can plug so many of them together, and they don’t cause fires, and you can use so many more of them without creating a horrifying power bill. I know all these things. I DO. But you are going to have to read this post as FEELINGS. If necessary, change the words around: imagine it is someone talking about how they used incandescent bulbs and found them so pallid and old-fashioned and wasteful and outlet-hogging and dangerous they couldn’t stand it and had to start over; rejoice with them, as I would, as they go back to the store and get LEDs and now they are happy! Know in your heart that I only care about MY tree in MY living room: I don’t have important feelings or opinions about YOUR tree because that is YOUR tree. This is a post about Christmas-light FEELINGS at a time when feelings are already elevated by many other things. It is a post about ANYTHING that causes intense feelings at this time when feelings are already elevated by many other things. It is a post that lets you skip a boring argument about which lights are better and why, and instead say “Oh, I know: I had a similarly intense reaction to star vs. angel this year” or “I can’t explain it, but I started crying when the particular holiday stamps I’d chosen were out of stock” or “For some inexplicable reason, this year I am spending WAY too many hours dithering over gifts—and when I finally choose something and order it, then I spend the next days hand-wringing that I made the wrong decision, and sometimes canceling the order so I have to start all over.”

To finally begin the story: I’d started at a certain level of stress just because it was important to me to get the tree decorated during the few days the twins were home for Thanksgiving. We didn’t do it Thursday, and Edward was away most of Friday getting a Crohn’s treatment, and we were going to be driving them back on Sunday, and here it was Friday evening and the lights weren’t even on the tree yet. Paul brought down the lights from the barn, and these were expensive good-quality “heavy duty” indoor/outdoor lights purchased within the last 1-3 years, and all of the strings failed to light. ALL of them. I tried other outlets just in case: nothing. I looked at them for obvious damage: nothing. On two of the strings, a short (two-foot, maybe?) section DID light. On the other strings, nothing lit. Inexplicable and maddening, and what a colossal waste.

I went to Paul with the issue. Normally I would wait for a sale on lights; normally I would buy them on one of my errand days; but this was the situation, and tomorrow was the last day to decorate the tree, so we drove to Target 20 minutes away and bought lights. Paul thought we should get LED lights. We both remembered that I don’t like LED lights, but we both thought maybe my various issues with LED lights had been resolved: the picture on the box looked exactly the same for the incandescent and the LED lights, so maybe LED lights were good now, and not cold and too intensely colored and overbright-yet-unglowy. My beloved little lighted birch trees are lit with LED lights and those are nice and warm and glowy! And anyway we’re liberal progressive Democrats and we should have the energy-saving lights.

We got them home and I started to put them on the tree. I had bought more lights than I’d thought we’d need, but they only covered 2/3rds of the tree. I unwound all the strings and started over; now they covered 3/4ths of the tree. I attempted to rally: I told myself this was fine, we would just decorate the bottom 3/4ths together, and then after the twins were back at school I would go buy more lights and decorate the top 1/4th myself. No big deal. I went out of the room to wash my hands and get rid of the empty boxes—and when I came back into the room, I noticed I hated the lights.

I talked myself through it: I don’t HATE the lights. The lights are FINE. I was fine with them the whole time I was putting them on the tree (twice). They’re just DIFFERENT THAN BEFORE. Of course there will be an adjustment! Just because they look like PRIMARY POSTER-PAINT COLORS, and are FAR FAR TOO BRIGHT, and there is FAR TOO MUCH BLUE HERE, and they have NONE OF THE MAGICAL GLOW OF CHRISTMAS LIGHTS….*pant pant* NO no, it’s fine, they’re fine, I’m just adjusting. Besides, what is the alternative at this point? Yes, we spent more than double to get not-enough LED lights and they weren’t even on sale and I don’t like them, but it is mid-evening and we only have one more day. Am I really going to box up all these lights, drive BACK to Target, get the WASTEFUL incandescent lights, and start all over putting lights on this tree??? No. No.

…Yes. I unwound all the strings of lights off the tree. I carefully packaged them up exactly as they had been, all the little twistie-ties and extra bulbs and paperwork. It took forever, but not as forever as I’d feared. I was almost meditative as I did it: focused, calm, resolute, driven by certainty that this of all Christmases is not the one to try to get through without enjoying the Christmas lights on the tree. Nor do I want to wait until mid-December (when the twins are back again) to do the tree. The options therefore have narrowed, and the one that gives me what I want involves considerable time and hassle; nevertheless I choose it.

I went to Paul. I hate the lights. There aren’t enough of them. They ruin Christmas lights for me, and Christmas lights are one of my top favorite things about Christmas. One single car dealership (and we live among MANY) uses more electricity in ONE SINGLE HOUR than our little tree will use ALL MONTH, and our tree will bring significantly more joy. Somebody asking ChatGPT A SINGLE DUMB QUESTION TO GET A SINGLE DUMB ANSWER probably uses more electricity than our little tree will use. He got his coat and we drove back to Target, another 40-minute round-trip. We returned the lights mere hours after we’d bought them, and the clerk didn’t even blink. “I changed my mind about LED lights,” I said apologetically. “You’re allowed,” he said pleasantly. “I’m still a liberal progressive who thinks the environment is one of our primary worldwide concerns,” I managed not to add.

We bought incandescent lights for less than half the price of the LED ones. We bought the cheap store-brand ones, because buying the expensive heavy-duty ones hadn’t prevented the wastefulness of strings breaking. I bought half again as many as I’d bought before, and still had to add in the two 50-count light sets I’d had on hand to send back with the twins (who had already said they didn’t want them). The tree looks wonderful. The lights look right. During dinner William put on a couple of episodes by a YouTuber who feels as I do about LED lights, except the YouTuber has found a brand/kind he likes, whereas I still don’t think they’re right.

I am still testing negative for Covid, so Paul and William are still isolating. I don’t know what the guidelines are, since we seem to be working with old ones from a couple years ago, but my guess looking at the last missive from my workplace on the topic (from 2022) is that if I am negative on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I can then go to work wearing a mask on Monday—especially if I can work mostly in the stacks, and not be near other people. I will consult with my two bosses on that.

In the meantime, having Thursday and Friday off has been a tremendous boon. I am using almost all my time to work on Christmas things. I’m trying to focus on one giftee at a time; yesterday I focused mostly on William. When I was pretty much done with his shopping, I turned my attention to my niece, and spent some delightful time researching combat boots (it’s an item on her wish list) with the help of Henry who is a couple of years older than my niece and has friends who wear combat boots. It was QUITE fun: one of his friends was sending link after link, and we were sending links back, and now we have narrowed it down to…let’s see, eleven pairs. Today I will attempt to narrow that down further, and then pick another child to shop for—probably Elizabeth.

Whenever I get tired of paging through online shopping options, or when I start feeling chilly from not moving around enough, I go out to the barn and fetch a box of Christmas dishes, or the Melissa & Doug Countdown Tree, or a couple of decor items. Because of this effort, this morning I am drinking my coffee out of a Christmas mug and feeling happy about it. FURTHERMORE: it was a Christmas mug I have not seen for YEARS, because I had for some inexplicable reason tucked it down into the corner of the wreath box?? Probably what happened was that I was putting away the wreaths and noticed one more mug in the dishwasher, and just added it in—not knowing that the following years I wouldn’t bother with wreaths. (This new house doesn’t work with them the way the old house did.) I found it this year only in a last-ditch effort to find the Christmas tree skirt we apparently lost in the move. I dug my hand down into the wreath box feeling for velour, and found china.

The mug is a Stechcol (a brand I often find myself picking up admiringly when I’m at HomeGoods or Marshalls), and I remember choosing it on a shopping trip with my mom: there were four different designs, and we stood there for awhile ranking our favorites and deciding how many we would each buy. I think I bought two, but I’m not sure: I might have only bought one; I might have donated the other one if it seemed too similar (I am always TRYING to cut down on the number of mugs I have) (while also constantly buying new mugs); it might be tucked down into the corner of a DIFFERENT box of decor.

I am having some trouble Christmassing. Which is not surprising, given the state of Everything, and really I am doing better than I did in 2016. But: I am having trouble. I have a to-do list that gets longer every day. I feel as if I might genuinely not be ready in time, and also that I am highly likely to feel regret that I didn’t enjoy this last holiday season enough before it was bleak, bleak, BLEAK late January, which is scheduled to last for many years. I have not started the Christmas cards. I have not been listening to Christmas music. I have not brought down the Christmas dishes, or put up any decorations except for the tree, which I was highly motivated to get up and decorated while the twins were home for Thanksgiving. I have bought very few presents. I am getting that quiet, dazed panicky feeling I get when I seem to Simply Not Be Doing something that needs to be done.

I am attempting to Work on Christmas Things at least a little each day: even if I cross a very minor and unimportant item off the to-do list, it is still OFF THE TO-DO LIST, which can lessen the oppression and also motivate further action. Today I brought out the pine-scented things: hand soap, dish soap, candle, and, this year, seasonal Dawn Power Wash:

I am a huge sucker for anything (1) Limited Edition and (2) seasonal pine. This particular example did make me feel like a housewife in a commercial, but there it is. I spritzed my counters with it, and I spritzed the cooking pan with it, and I felt something akin to Christmas joy. It is not that anything can make housecleaning fun—but there was that feeling that the Christmas season can take ordinary things and make them a little sparkly and special. …No, I know how this sounds.

Today I also bought a gift for my pelvic-floor therapist, which is a weird new gifting category this year. I am not saying I felt I MUST buy her something: I think it would be 100% okay to give her a gift card, or literally nothing. But this is one of the low-pressure-just-fun parts of Christmas I enjoy, which is one of the reasons I picked this as today’s task: as a way to stall on the higher-pressure tasks. There is an ongoing joke in therapy about blueberries, and I will tell you about it another time, but anyway I bought her some blueberry earrings that if I am lucky will be here by Christmas:

(image from etsy.com)

They are coming from BULGARIA. And when I put them in my Etsy cart along with several other options to consider, a few hours later I got an email offering me free shipping, which took like $10 off. I will give the physical therapist the earrings PLUS a gift card, because I really think the absolute best gift for most people who provide a service (housecleaners, teachers, mail carriers, hair stylists) is MONEY, and in this case the earrings are less about her gift and more about me having fun with her gift. AND: in this case, this is a $5 joke, and I spent $20 because those were The Best Blueberry Earrings and I am currently in the exceedingly fortunate position of being able to spend $20 on a $5 joke in the hopes that the item is not ONLY a joke.

I am also trying to do a few NON-Christmas Tasks each day. Putting in a load of laundry. Wiping down the counters with the Christmas Joy. Figuring out a chewable vitamin for my child with Crohn’s disease who finally mentioned that vitamins are being skipped because swallowing big pills is causing gagging/barfing. Returning the Old Navy stretch pants and the Amazon stretch jeans that were both disasters. Setting up a small regular monthly contribution to NPR: I aimed for approximately the amount I used to spend to subscribe to The Washington Post.

I have not taken any action on the holiday outfit I need for Paul’s office party in a few days; that is just going to have to be accomplished on the fly. Especially after I missed the deadline for ordering the sequin pants, I was extremely reassured by commenter Heather, who said, with what immediately hit my brain with the clarion ring of Truth: “For parties, waist-up clothing is more important than waist-down. If you are wearing a white blouse with fun pants…most people just see a white blouse.” Now, maybe sequin pants would have been an exception. But this makes me feel free to wear normal dark jeans with my sleeveless sequin top and fancy cardigan, and I’ll add a matte-gold-flowers quiet-statement necklace and some dangly earrings and a big cocktail ring, and I will be fancy enough for a brewery.

Meanwhile I have to ride the exercise bike for at least 30 minutes. And I have to do my pelvic-floor therapy exercises. And I have to clean the bathroom. And I have to go to work. And I have to make dinner. And I have to run errands and do the grocery shopping. And each day that goes by is another day I might have missed a shipping deadline. I am doubling up on things: I have to ride the exercise bike for 30 minutes to prepare for knee surgery; but fortunately I got a recumbent bicycle so I can use that same time to catch up on my phone games. I know my phone games are unimportant in the universal scheme of things, but they are important to me, and I would feel sad and dismal to lose my streaks and so forth.

I was writing this last night when Paul texted from upstairs, where he had gone to lie down, to say that he had a fever. Twenty minutes later he stood in front of me, telling me a story about the instructions for the covid test, a story that ENDED with the news that his test was positive. STANDING IN FRONT OF ME TELLING A LONG STORY ABOUT THE INSTRUCTIONS. SHOO, SHOO, SHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I went briskly to our room and removed the things that I’ll need. William also tested positive; he said he would have thought he just had a mild cold. Henry and I are so far negative. I will not go to work, and will test again today. We will miss the holiday party I failed to buy the sequined pants for. I hope this addendum won’t redirect the entire conversation to covid: I was hoping to hear more about other people maybe having trouble Christmassing, too, and about how you’re coping and what you’ve managed to do so far.

When last we discussed it (and I am not linking to it, because it is in a post about election night plans and I don’t think any of us want or need that right now), I had chosen this Exerpeutic Recumbent exercise bike: the same brand as the one we’d had and liked, but recumbent in case that was better, and a good price. The only downside was that the estimated delivery was a MONTH later. But it was the bike I wanted, and I still had well over two months before my knee surgery.

After a month had gone by and the bike still hadn’t even shipped let alone arrived, Amazon canceled the order without explanation. This was a blow: it was okay to wait when we were waiting for The Right Bike, but now we’d wasted a month of waiting, a month when I could have been using the bike pre-knee-surgery. William and I tried not to plummet into despair. (He uses the exercise bike regularly and was quite affected by the breaking of the earlier bike and then the delay.)

I asked William if he would be willing to research a new bike, and he said he was. His research mostly involved asking around in his various online exercise communities, and he came back with the information that there were two camps: first camp says you cannot get a good exercise bike for under $500 (that was my cut-off) and in fact not for under $1500; second camp says Sunny bikes are inexpensive and terrific. We allied ourselves with the second camp, and ordered a Sunny bike. (William suggested the Standard, but I thought I might want some of the app availability of the Smart model.)

(image from sunnyhealthfitness.com)

The bike arrived a week and a half later (there were holidays in there) with free shipping, and it’s exactly what I was looking for. We’ve only had it a few days, so I can’t report on its durability, but it is QUIET and it is COMFORTABLE, and the recumbent style makes it MUCH EASIER to read and/or play on my phone while using it, which makes me MUCH MORE LIKELY to actually use it.

My only complaint involved the ordering process: I found it very difficult to tell the differences among the various bike options—and some options were only available if you clicked on a bike and then selected a different level of expense (Elite, Standard, Smart, etc.). William and I sat at the computer for perhaps half an hour, saying “Wait, is that the one we clicked on before, or a different one?” And they’re all basically named the same thing. Even knowing which one we ordered, I had to go back into my order history and literally click on it so that I could give you an accurate link and a picture. The main differences between one bike and another seemed to be (1) whether the back of the seat was mesh or solid, (2) number of app features, and (3) arm-exercising options.

There is a Cyber Monday sale (it is of course extended, as all Cyber Monday sales are, so it is still happening through Wednesday and possibly for the rest of our natural lives): 20% off with code CM20. If I’ve done that math correctly, it brings the $270 bike down to $216. I THINK if you click this link to the site and then buy something I get “points” for referring you, but don’t worry if it doesn’t work, and ESPECIALLY if it doesn’t work with the sale (GET THE SALE): the points are discounts off future orders, and I am not likely to be purchasing many more pieces of exercise equipment. But if you DO click the points link, and then you want to find the same bike I bought, the product number of the bike is SF-RB4616SMART. (And if you are reading this after the 20% off sale has ended, I THINK the link is supposed to give you 15% off—but let me know if it doesn’t, because there’s an option for me to send an email to a friend giving them 15% off.)

I need an outfit to wear to Paul’s office holiday party, which is to be held, delightfully, at a BREWERY. You may be wondering why I don’t just wear the outfit I bought the last time we discussed this, and it’s because I don’t think the pants (black velvet with some glitter) will fit. I guess I could try them. But my guess is that they will not accommodate my perimenopausal tum in a way that feels warm and loving.

Would it be BONKERS to buy sequined flare pants?:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

And if so, is it the GOOD kind of bonkers? What is the sound/sensation when you walk with sequined legs? Is it like corduroy but…clickier?

Also, what shoes would a person who does not wear high heels wear with these pants?

I kind of like the careless loose white oxford the model is wearing, but I’d need it LONGER (the butt MUST be covered), and I would unbutton some top buttons but NONE OF the bottom buttons. I checked to see if Old Navy had a white satin longish oxford, but they do not. This might be sour grapes, but I’m not sure I could pull off that loungey satin look anyway. I need something that suits my nervous, eager-to-please party attitude and uptight updo. My usual glitzy top is a champagne-sequined sleeveless shirt, worn with a flowy dressy thin open cardigan with a drapey front, but that is not going to work with sequined pants.

I could get these shiny black pants instead:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

Less fun than the sequins, but with the benefit of working with a dressy top I’m already happy with. And maybe better for a brewery? and a spouse’s work gathering?

Or they come in silver, which is more fun but I suspect less flattering on me (I think they hit the eye as white), and also then I REALLY don’t know what to do about a top:

(image from oldnavy.gap.com)

And I hope you ALWAYS consider yourself Automatically Reciprocally Asked in cases like this (the only reason I don’t specifically ask every single time is that I feel it comes across as Encouraging Blog Engagement)—but if you have a holiday office party to go to, what are YOU wearing? I would be so interested to know. I am not confident about fashion, and I like to start with other peoples’ templates.

Well, obviously I should have looked for input on labeling the back of a collage print BEFORE getting the prints made, because BY FAR my favorite idea was to add the names to each photo in the collage. I have spent the last few days wondering if I should just get them done over. It’s not so much about the money (it’s a matter of $11); it’s more, can I make myself start over on this collage print, or is it just too wonderful to have already submitted it and picked up the prints? But it would ALSO be wonderful not to be looking at a pile of prints that need labeling.

Are you already feeling a little overwhelmed by holiday stuff? I am already feeling a little overwhelmed. This year, though, it is nice to have that distraction. If I am thinking about the million things that need to be done between now and the shipping deadlines, or now and the work holiday party, then I am NOT thinking about what is happening shortly after the holidays.

Speaking of which, I wish I could remember where I saw someone saying that there was a difference between “media” (the endless flow of information meant to keep viewers engaged) and “news” (actual information), but it has already changed the way I think of taking in news. Which is bad for my line-a-day journal, but good for my mental state.

For example: awhile back, I spent quite a bit of time agitating over the idea of M@tt G@etz as attorney general, and listening to NPR talking to experts about what an alarming choice he was—and then he ended up withdrawing. I am not going to be able to handle these next years if I am agitating over the things that end up NOT HAPPENING, as well as the ones that DO HAPPEN. I am not quite sure what specifically this means for my news/media intake, but it was helpful to realize that what I’d been taking in was MEDIA: hours of NPR discussing what might happen with the various nominees. Rather than NEWS, which I guess would be the confirmation of nominees? I still feel a little unclear, and yet for now I’ve stopped listening to hours of NPR asking experts to guess at all the stressful things in our future, things I can’t do anything about, at least at this point when they haven’t started happening yet. When we get to the part where I can at least be writing to my senators/representatives to ask them to do things, I can tune in a little more.

To end on a non-political note, I would like to recommend these Old Navy utility pants:

(image from OldNavy.Gap.com)

I am between two pants sizes, and I ordered the larger of those two sizes, and that was the right choice to accommodate the perimenopausal tum and be comfy; the high waist makes the tum feel supported and snuggled rather than condemned and criticized. And my dears, the POCKETS. The POCKETS. My entire phone not only fits into the pocket but fits LOW in the pocket. I would buy these pants FOR THE POCKETS ALONE. Yes, the color options are all kind of weird, and yet I wish I’d bought more of the weird colors before they ran out of my size. I chose the odd green, and I wish I had also bought the odd blue they now seem to be completely out of; I can still get the odd rust ones in my size, and I might do it even though I might need to buy shirts that would look right with it. (The cream color would not work on me: I would immediately be/look grubby.)

Also: they do not DRAG ON THE GROUND like so many pants do on me! They are the RIGHT INSEAM for me! This may mean that they will be short on you, if you normally buy pants that don’t drag on the ground; you may need the Tall.

P.S. I also recommend this boyfriend flannel shirt, if you would like some cozy clothes for panicking in. I sized up one size, and if I were ordering another one (as I might) I’d order my usual size instead (it is already oversized as part of the “boyfriend” styling)—but a size up is not wrong. I have been wearing it almost constantly, alternating with one of Paul’s flannel shirts. It is the thinner, softer flannel, not the bulkier, rougher kind. I ordered the grey plaid, if you want to be twins. I think it looks very cute with the weird green pants.

If you ever:
(1) create a COLLAGE photo print to include with holiday cards, AND
(2) you generally label the backs with who’s who,

then I wish to ask: HOW DO YOU DO IT? I wish to ask that of you even if the question is hypothetical because you do not do that and you do not do that either. (I’m going to attempt to keep my terms tidy, so that “print” or “collage” refers to the entire printed collage, and “photo” refers to one of the photos in that collage.)

Like, imagine it: it is a 4×6 print, let’s say it is horizontal, and it includes let’s say six photos of various family members. And you would like to label the back of the print, so that future generations (and also the not-very-in-touch people on your card list) know which people are in which photo.

My first inclination was to label BEHIND EACH PHOTO. That is: if Elizabeth and Edward are in a photo together at the top right of the print, then I would be writing “Elizabeth and Edward” on the top LEFT of the back. Like, if you were to cut the photo collage into separate little photos, each individual photo would still be labeled correctly.

But when I imagine taking someone else’s collage print and flipping it over, the behind-each-photo idea seems confusing: my brain wants to project my memory of the images onto the back of the card, and have the names written correspondingly. If I look at a photo at the upper right, and then I flip it over, my brain expects to see those names at the upper right, just like on the print.

I suppose I could do a sort of “L to R, top row:” situation, but that feels…exhausting.

WHAT SAY YOU. (If your very valid opinion is “Just don’t label the back, this solves everything,” I do hear you, I do, but I am going to label the backs, so “don’t” isn’t one of the options remaining to us at THIS stage of the decision tree.)

GOOD MORNING SO if you are in the United States and your passports expire sometime in the next 4+ years, may I suggest along with many others that it would NOT BE A BAD IDEA to renew them early? I work at a library that also serves as a passport-acceptance agency, and we have been DELUGED with calls/appointments. One coworker mentioned she saw that passport applications/renewals have been up 800% since the election and MAY I SAY I AM NOT SURPRISED. Paul and I got our passports in the VERY EASY TO REMEMBER month of November 2016, so we technically have almost two more years before they expire, but we are going to just go ahead and renew them now. I was hand-wringing a little about the waste of money, and William (age 23 and this election was HIS 2016) said “What is that, a 20% loss? Like, $32? to get it renewed NOW instead of After Whatever Happens, Happens?” Which helped considerably.

I do think that, given the incoming administration’s apparent determination to appoint the LEAST qualified and MOST destructive candidates to each vitally important post, it wouldn’t be weird to wonder if the passport-processing agencies might not be quite the same after January 2025, when someone takes his lil executive hammer and uses it to flail away at all those nasty agencies that hold up the government and nation.