Christmas story so far... a two parter.
I brought down xmas from the attic yesterday, a couple of weeks earlier than normal. The damp patch has gotten significantly worse over the last couple of months and when we got the decorations down there's some limited water damage on the odd item. Luckily I have some ready mix mortar specifically for this job and as I'd had to move things and rearrange the attic to get to xmas, I cleared a workspace beneath the window, got the steps out and got to work.
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An hour with a wire brush to clean the surface, bucket, mix and trowel, and weather proofing in place.
Sorting out the roof mostly meant I missed putting up the decorations. Traditionally we have the Christmas Pigeon at the top of out tree. Coincidentally, our halloween severed foot was in the christmas box.
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This year, 'Er in lockdown bought a grotesque 4 foot, illuminated Santa 's head originally used as a commercial/retail decoration and hung it up during the week of halloween, thus blurring the distinction.
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As boundaries are already blurred and the severed foot turned up in traditional red and white christmas colours, I suggested, partly joking and serious at the same time, that we drop the Christmas Pigeon this year and start a new family tradition of the Christmas Severed Foot topping our christmas tree. 'Er in lockdown smiled at the humour but didn't bite at the idea.
Shortly afterwards, our eldest came down from his darkend bedroom, you know, the existential "all I see is black" dead inside teen. He saw the christmas pigeon on top of the tree and got excited at the prospect of designing a new christmas pigeon topper for our tree this year. I can't in all good faith, deny him his christmas pigeon excitement.
And that's the definition of good parenting: Letting go of your own hopes and dreams of a christmas severed foot so your children can hope and dream of a shiney new christmas pigeon.