The Least Wonderful Time of the Year

My favorite and least favorite days of the year come about a month apart. The favorite day is the Friday after Thanksgiving when the many boxes of Christmas decorations come out and the house is transformed into a winter wonderland. It's usually a two day effort, but when it's done, the house looks great inside and out.

You can probably guess what my least favorite day is - today, the day when everything starts coming down. There's a finality to all of it that really takes the wind out of the holiday sails. I'm the lighting director, so I spent the day taking down and putting away all the outside and inside lights, along with various other chores such as removing the garland on the banisters and taking all the ornaments and lighting off the tree (we've got a lot of stuff). The wife and daughter were putting away other decorations, including two nativity sets and two Victorian villages.

We still have some big stuff left for tomorrow. The 6' lighted wreath at the top of the stairs takes four of us to hang back up in the garage, and the 9' tree will take at least three of us to get back up in its spot in the garage. My boy, who is now over 6' tall and has a better sense of balance than me will have to get up on the ladder to take the window lighting down, and then climb the tree to get the last of the outdoor lights. Better him than me.

We were the first ones in the neighborhood to get the lights up, and it looks like we'll be the first to take them down. One of my neighbors didn't put his lights up until two days before Christmas. Why bother?

I saw something today that kind of caught my attention. I stopped in a Togo's to pick up lunch and a four man fire engine crew was in there ordering their lunch. I won't give the engine number because I don't want to create any problems for anybody, but when they still had one guy left to order their pagers started going off. I figured if they had a call they probably would have dropped everything and headed out.

However, the fourth guy went ahead and ordered his sandwich, the guys filled their drinks, and the captain waited as the manager processed his credit card. He grabbed up all the sandwiches and headed for the engine, lit up the lights and siren and took off. Apparently the pagers were signalling an emergency call for that paramedic engine company, and finishing their order added at least 5 minutes to their response time. I sure hope whatever they were going to wasn't time critical. I'd hate to think my loved one died because the paramedic was delayed while his submarine sandwich was being made.

I don't want to judge their actions too harshly, since for all I know the decision to finish up may have been within department policy, but just looking at it as an outsider, it was a little puzzling.

More work tomorrow (and hopefully it won't involve paramedics).