Season's Greetings

I don't know if I've mentioned this before on my blog, but anyone who knows me knows that I hate winter. Scratch that - I LOATHE winter. I actually start getting bummed in August, while it's still eleventy-eight degrees and the humidity is so thick that what hair isn't sticking to your neck is frizzed out in a giant puff ball, because August means that summer is almost over, fall is about to start, and fall is a prelude to winter. Yes, I have issues.

But, for whatever reason, I get sucked into the holiday spirit of the months between October and December and get super excited about Christmas and decorating for Christmas and shopping for Christmas and eventually actually celebrating Christmas. (That being said, I refuse to leave the house on Black Friday - of all the ways to leave this earth, trampled by crazed shoppers trying to get a talking Elmo doll is not the way I'd like to go. Poor Walmart guy, that was so sad.)

Anyway, today we hung our Christmas lights outside and I think it may have been the best Christmas-lights-hanging I've ever experienced. Probably because it was about 65 degrees out there this afternoon. There is something to be said for nailing the lights onto the porch rail when your fingers AREN'T frozen.

The Christmas lights were my third step into the holiday season. First step: hot chocolate. You can claim hot chocolate for any cold weather time, so it's an acceptable fall beverage. But seriously, hot chocolate belongs to Christmas. Next was an early viewing of a Christmas movie last week. While You Were Sleeping is one of my all-time favorite Christmas movies (even if it's not technically a Christmas movie, but kind of is), and I will watch it a good dozen times between now and the Big Day. We've already played it twice (somehow my mom and I both managed to sleep through the entire thing the first time around). And finally, today we got the Christmas lights up. That is normally a post-Thanksgiving activity, but when you have such nice weather in November, you have to take advantage of the opportunity - I mean, this is Indiana. We could have 10 feet of snow the weekend after Turkey Day.

I will try to hold out on the Christmas music until after Thanksgiving - you have to save something for the real season, right? And then the indoor tree has to go up (I love the twinkle lights in the living room when it's dark in the house; such a happy, warm glow), but that will go after Turkey Day, too. And then Merry Christmas and Happy New Year followed by 3 months of frozen-over H-E-double-hockey-sticks (only broken up by the most hockey-stickish of holidays: Valentine's Day. Bleck, blarg, barf.).

So I'll enjoy my twinkle lights as long as I can. But instead of sugar plums, I'll be dreaming of tropical beaches and palm fronds dancing in my head (just the palm fronds will be dancing, not the beaches).