Minimal Christmas

So, the neighborhood holiday decoration (the plywood reindeer playing the fiddle) is supposed to be up by Saturday night.  (So says the third email reminder on the subject I just received.  Although, apparently between the second and the third, someone taught them how to spell "Menorah."  This amuses me.)  In any event, the "official" neighborhood holiday decoration period begins on Saturday, so they want my reindeer out by then.  My plan was to also get the lights up simultaneously, but I recently dropped that goal in favor of "just get the damn reindeer up."

This because I've been outrageously busy at work.  I mean, really really busy.  (Or, at least, really really busy for government work.  If I was in private practice, I'd be working hours like this all the time.  But it has rarely happened during the fifteen years I've been with the court.)  So, every day this week, I've planned to put the reindeer out when I got home -- and then I ended up working late and just not being in the mood to haul a plywood reindeer outside at 8:00 at night.

But today it seemed like a "now or never" situation -- it was supposed to start raining tonight and keep going straight through Saturday.  So, unless I want to be hauling reindeer in the rain (not bloody likely), it was tonight.

Got home at 9:00.  Didn't even bother going into the house or changing out of my suede skirt.  Just pulled into the garage, grabbed the six-foot plywood reindeer, and started hauling it out to curb.  (It got named in the process.  It kept getting caught on things -- my car, my clothes, the garage cabinets -- and I ended up saying aloud, "Come on, Pokey.")

Conveniently, Pokey already had some ropes attached to his back, so once I dragged him out to the parkway, I was easily able to tie him to a tree.  I went back into the garage and grabbed my (solar -- yeah, that'll work well) spotlight for him.  I figured I'd have to hammer a screwdriver into the dirt to make a hole for the plastic spike on which the spotlight sits, but the ground was soft enough and the spike went right in.  Aimed the (uncharged) spotlight in what appeared to be the general direction of Pokey; aimed the solar panel in the general direction of where the sun ought to be; put the screwdriver and hammer away; and went back into the house.


Started raining about an hour later.