Last night I put up the border wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom. As it turned out we didn’t have enough. We had two 15 foot long packages, but with all the twists and turns, boxing out for shower and closet, we lacked about 8-9 feet. Oh well, it’s a stock item at Wal-Mart. Lynda should be able to get some more.

Also last night we finished putting up our second Christmas tree, this one in the walk-out basement family room. This is the old artificial tree we replaced back in 2000 or thereabouts, and tried to sell at umpteen garage sales but it never would sell. Given the size of our house, and the fact that we’ll probably hang out in the family room some while all the kids are all here. Unlike the tree upstairs, this one is not decorated with single color lights and thematic ornaments of two complementary colors. It has multi-colored lights and a hodge-podge of ornaments collected over the years. My kind of tree, bringing back memories of childhood.

To our normal Christmas decorations (which admittedly were a little sparse for our space) we added lights on the balcony, pre-lit garland along the fireplace and stairway upper walls, and the Christmas village on top of the buffet. It’s beginning to look like Christmas at the Todd house.

We are decorating early due to having the family in for Thanksgiving, but not for Christmas. So we’ll have the house decorated and do a low-key gift exchange, mainly for Ephraim. Ezra will also be there, but safely berthed in his mother’s amniotic fluid. His grand entrance will be in March.

So for a few weeks I’m not going to do much writing. I have a proposal to Buildipedia.com for five articles, but only one or two will be due before Christmas. I will try to keep up with this blog, posting twice or three times a week. I have a series of political articles I’m thinking of writing for The Senescent Man blog, though we shall see how the time goes. As far as new creative writing goes, I’m not anticipating any. Oh, if time allows and inspiration rises, I might do a couple of articles for Suite101.com. But otherwise, I’m not going to add writing to the stress of the holidays. It seems we have more parties and functions to go to than normal this year. Writing can mostly wait.