Pocket's Least Favorite Time of the Year

Monday was one of my least favorite days of the year.  It was decoration day when the house gets a Christmas makeover.  I like Christmas but I hate the make over.  There is too much activity.  Boxes being brought in the house, doors opening and shutting (being a Yorkie I have a sacred duty to bark whenever a door opens or shuts even if I know it is just Daddy with a box), trees growing in strange rooms and unnatural things being put on said tree, electrical lights not working and causing unrest:  The whole day is much too stressful.

There is nowhere to go and nowhere to sit.  When we lived in the condo there were two floors and I would retreat with Foley to the second where she would climb into her blanket in disgust.  But now, in our mobile home without wheels, there is no upstairs and nowhere to hide.  When I have nowhere to go I find myself underfoot which only adds to the decoration stress.  And then there is River.

Every great endeavour ever accomplished by man could have been ruined by River Song.  She is addicted to human contact and if she goes five minutes without it she seeks it out.  She sat between Mommy’s legs, perched on her feet, and when Mommy wouldn’t stop moving she stood on her back legs and hugged Mommy’s legs with her front paws.  Mommy shimmied and shook but a determined Griff is hard to shake.

In the last few years, when Mommy looked at Christmas as more of a duty than a holiday the main decorations took place in the front room which is an office during the non Christmas season and is known for the beautiful rug that doubles as a great anal gland scratcher.  But this year Mommy decided to put the tree in the kitchen by the table so she could enjoy in from the living room.  I know what my Nana would have said.  “If you put the Christmas tree in the kitchen it will catch fire and burn down the house.”  Oh how I miss her wise council.  She would have prevented the desecration of my kitchen.

Daddy kept bringing in box after box which made passage through the kitchen impossible.  And then Mommy searched through the boxes growing more frustrated.   There were always more branches that needed straightening, more ornaments that needed placing, more decorations that needed shelf space.  I am very intuitive and her growing frustration caused me unrest.  But that was nothing compared with Daddy.

He was outside putting his lights on his pole and he was left very unsatisfied when his pole refused to light.  Under Mommy’s direction he bought a thing called a Light Shower that projects lights on the side of the house and makes it look like you have hanging lights without doing the work of hanging the lights which is great unless you break the spike that goes into the ground and props up the box that projects the lights.  Daddy broke the spike that held up the box that projected the lights.   The wave of frustration I felt from him nearly knocked me over.  Finally Daddy bungee corded his box to his pole which wasn’t doing any lighting on it’s own and by nightfall we had pretty lights on the side of the house.

The boxes were removed from the house and the frustration level fell to the normal daily frustration.  The house is pretty, the outside is lit up, and I am where I belong, snuggled next to my Mom, content, but dreading another one of my least favorite days.

Christmas Undecorating Day.