The 2015 Christmas season is officially boxed up and in hibernation until later this year.  Oh. Can you believe it?  It isn’t “Christmas next year“.   Next Christmas is the end of this year—2016.  Actually, I have to run to the Walmart in a little while to purchase a couple of more bins to store the rest of the many pillows that were purchased this year.  And pack up some linens and a few other items.  Then the season will officially be boxed up.

I finally packed up the last of the pillows and decorations today!

The bannisters are bare and to tell you the truth, as much as I am saddened by the end of the season, I’m diggin’ the way everything looks right now. The buildup to Christmas is so incredible—from Thanksgiving on it’s the time of decorating, and wrapping gifts and baking and meal prep and being with family.  And with the snap of a finger—it’s finished. The January let-down begins.

As much as I love the way the stairway  looked with the greenery and the rustic ribbon (pic on right), I’m giving a sigh of relief that everything is put away!

 And now, I’m gonna tell you how we spent our New Year’s Day.

First of all, I was so incredibly good.  I got rid of the remaining sweets. (NO, I did NOT eat them. Bonaparte was disgusted enough that I ate, wolfed down, and literally inhaled two entire pints of Halo Farms Ice Cream. Those pints were my “last meal” before the start of my “healthy eating” year, months, weeks, days.)

Yes I did.  I consumed the entire contents of the Chocolate Peanut Paradise and Praline Pecan ice creams.  I left the Tahiti Vanilla Bean for Bonaparte. I’m a giver!

Okay. I got rid of most of the remaining sweets.  I kept the biscotti.  There is a reason for this.  What if guests stop by?  I need something to offer to them. (This is delusional because I have one friend within a 25-mile radius of Phoenixville. Everyone else lives in New Jersey or New York or other points within the USA and Europe. Nobody will stop by to see me.)

The biscotti is stored in airtight bags some are in the freezer, as shown on the left. Some are “hidden” *cough* in a large pot in one of the kitchen cabinets!

I cleaned out most of the fridge.  I got rid of the pate because if I wanted to have it, I would have to eat it on a carb-filled cracker or bread.  I’m not going to go near carbs trying to steer clear of carbs for at least 30 days.  Bonaparte won’t mind because he’ll have all those lousy Wegman’s baguettes to himself.

But enough about food because I’m becoming  very hungry. And it’s only 10:07 in the morning.

Next pleasurable task god-awful chore was taking the tree down. But first—I had to strip our crooked tree of her ornaments, rustic ribbon and lights.  And with every touch I bestowed upon “The Little Crooked”, she shed about 500 needles.

It was hard for me to process the fact that we took “Little Crooked” down after less than a month! This was the driest tree we ever had. Look how bare the top is!

By the time I was finished, there were only a handful of needles left on her.  I swear to God I only wish I could shed my fat as quick as our tree shed needles.

My ornament storage bin.  I had my long-needed exercise by taking each ornament off the tree, walking over to the dining room table and placing the ornament in the bin. It was taxing and I broke a sweat!

But before we officially “took her down”, I had to sweep up the needles manually before vacuuming.

This is just a very small amount of the needles that were shed.  I envy those with fake trees!

This is where it got ugly. This is why I didn’t make a resolution to not curse or curb my gutter mouth.   In the first place, I refuse to ruin our vacuum cleaner with a ton of fir needles. Those needles won’t make the place smell like a pine laden forest. The tree stopped gifting us with her scent two weeks ago.  In the second place, the needles will only get stuck in big clumps and clog the hose and I’ll only end up cursing the vacuum as well.

It was quite the site as I got down on all fours to collect the needles.  I started “scratching” the needles in piles on the carpet.  Chippy has this habit of scratching the carpet. When he does this I make threats that would have PETA and any other animal-loving association storm through my door and take him away for good.

This is more like it.  There were needles EVERYWHERE. If you look closely behind the tree, you’ll see aluminum foil. It’s covering the vent. I had to stick my arm down the vent to collect a mountain of needles!

However, this time, I was hoping that I could lead the old Chipster by example and have him come over and assist me.  Instead, when he saw me on all fours, he decided to make me his girlfriend and he tried to do the bouncy-bouncy with me.

I swear to you I could hear Burt Bacharach singing “The Look of Love” in the background!

I started to curse the carpet.  Who the hell invented wall-to-wall carpeting anyway?  Carpeting is the bane of my existence. I hate it. Carpeting is NEVER EVER fully clean.   Trust me. When I had the house in New Jersey, I went through not one, but two Hoover Carpet Steamers. Two. I was obsessive. And no matter how many times I used that steamer, the same amount of filth turned the water gray. It was vile.

That’s right. I went through TWO of these babies.   I need to get another one very soon!

Those pesky dust mites that are invisible and their germ partners were probably doing the happy dance when I picked those needles up.

You know how one thought leads to another? You know how I venture off-topic?

Well, cleaning those damn needles led to thoughts other than how much I hate carpeting.

I started thinking about job interviews.  I pretended to be at an interview with an all too self-important HR Princess…

HR Princess:  “So tell me. Just WHY would you like to be employed here in this position?”

Me: “I want this job because I need to replace the goddam carpeting in my home with hardwood flooring.  We have hardwood in the foyer and downstairs hallway.  We also have hardwood in the kitchen, sunroom, and dining room.  And now, I feel the need to be rid of toxins and germs and must work in order to pay for the living room, stairs, and upstairs hallway to be floored with a beautiful wood.”

HR Princess: “Is THAT the only reason you want this position???”

Me: “No.  I also want to start getting fillers in my face.  I want the full lips I had in my twenties.”  “Oh. And I want to purchase a Louie Neverfull bag.”  “I’m deeply shallow and I admit it”. “Having a job is the only way I will be able to afford all of these luxuries—um, necessities!”

Just ONE reason that I so desperately want a job!

I would LOVE to recite those sentences on a job interview.  It would be honest.  And I can bet, 95 percent of people who go on job interviews are thinking the same exact thing!

Back to New Year’s Day at Chateau Bonaparte!

After we wrapped the tree in its huge plastic throw-away bag, the sofas were stripped of pillows and cozy Christmas-themed throw blankets.

We gave “Little Crooked” a proper send off!

All the sofas in the house are looking mighty plain without the festive pillows and throws!

The table linens and tree skirt were laundered and ironed.

Not only is the tree skirt laundered and ironed, but it is starched and sprayed with Lavender scent! All ready for next December!

I packed what I could and left the remaining decorations out to be packed in new bins.

Waiting to be packed away.  My new strategy is placing each strand of lights in plastic zippered bags. I think there may be less tangling by packing them this way!

Bonaparte and I finished just in time to get dressed and head off to the movies to see “Hateful Eight”, the new Quentin Tarantino film.

I decided to put on a pair of pants that I hadn’t worn in a long time.  Black GAP jeggings.  I could not snap them. These are “jeggings”—which means there is a shitload of stretch and I could not close them because my gut got that fat. My belly resembled a  Blobfish .

Seriously. My gut and the spillage pretty much resembles this blobfish.  The only difference is my belly lacks two eyes!

 I’m so disgusted with my lack of willpower to eat healthy and exercise.   I grabbed a pair of fat pants and squeezed into them, vowing that when I finally become employed, I’ll add a tummy tuck to that list with the hardwood flooring, fillers, and Neverfull bag.

I’m gonna be honest.  I love Quentin Tarantino.  In fact, I’ve been tempted to write to him asking him to hire me to be in one of his films.  I could be the old, ugly, bald and cross-eyed lunatic lady who owns a luncheonette and poisons people.  It would not be much of a stretch.

Anyway, “Inglourious Bastards” and “Django Unchained” are two of my all-time favorite movies.  Who couldn’t forget John Travolta in “Pulp Fiction”?  Tarantino never fails to entertain.  “Hateful Eight” was not among my favorite Quentin movies.  Too much talking and not enough action until the last ten minutes.   I think Mr. Tarantino must be spending too much time watching “new-wave” French films –there is nothing but talking in those new wave films.

The cast was great–especially Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason-Leigh. There was NOT enough of Channing Tatum! Unfortunately, for us, it wasn’t Tarantino’s best movie!

An errand run completed our afternoon and  then it was time to come home and relax.

I got a bit sad.  Thinking about the kids. Thinking about the fact I’ll be 61 come April and I’m unemployed, fat, and most of all lazy. My face is getting wrinkly. My dye jobs only last two weeks because the gray roots are so fierce (and not fierce in a good way).  I was on the verge of a pity-party.

See my wrinkles. Ugh. I need to start going through the trash at dermatologists’s offices. Maybe I can find half-filled vials of Botox or Juviderm! Those fucking roots.  I just colored them a couple of weeks before Christmas!

Then Bonaparte came downstairs with a piggy nose and all I could do was laugh. Actually, we both had a good and long laugh with each other.  The piggy nose was one of the items in the box of clues my kids gave me to hint my trip to Arkansas. They eat a lot of barbeque in Arkansas.

Bonaparte always knows how to cheer me up and get me laughing!  Laughing is always the best medication! It worked and we had a blast of an evening for the first night of 2016!

And after a nice little dinner of salmon and salad, we spent the rest of New Year’s Day evening watching old reruns of Saturday Night Live.

Oops! I forgot. I did manage to keep a bit of a reminder of Christmas.  I saved the Poinsettias.  I couldn’t stand to throw a living plant in the trash. Maybe they will survive the winter!

They may have lost leaves, but they are still alive..and I love red!

It was a lovely start to the New Year!  XOXOXOXO

More Beatles. Because I DO get by with a little help from my friends—especially my friends who enjoy reading my blog! For you….