Poe and the Christmas Ornaments

For Jenne, the cats and I, the day after Thanksgiving is traditionally ‘decorate the house for Christmas day.’ It's a time of climbing up into the attic, lowering down the boxes of ornaments, garlands, lights (my yearly nemesis) and Christmas figurines. Oh, and let's not forget the biggest box of all, the one containing the artificial tree. Then the boxes are carried down to the living room where Poe and San decide that it's better to lay on top of the boxes than it is to lay under the blankets on the bed (their usual nap place). Being that Poe and San are cats, Jenne and I expect nothing less. I am happy to report that this year the decorating went very well and there was no traditional fight with the lights, nor strings of obscenities and beer consumption was down over previous decorating days. Speaking of obscenities, in geosynchronous orbit above our house I believe that there are clouds of the previous years’ obscenities. They may eventually fade away. So, there was no war of the lights this year. In fact we only had one strand that didn’t work, but we still had more than enough lights for the tree and did not have to leave our home and brave the stores. We did that two years ago and it wasn’t pleasant. The malfunctioning strand was harvested for its good bulbs and they are now part of the replacement reserve. And after a few moments of initial curiosity, Poe and San wandered off to the bedroom for their midday nap and Jenne and I were able to decorate, enjoy mugs of hot cider and let that Red Ryder bb gun movie run… twice!