I don’t know what happened to me. Along the way, somewhere, I lost the ability to appreciate and enjoy the Christmas season. It’s as if I magically transformed into a grumpy 87 year old man who calls wreaths “poppycock” and harrumphs at anything made with forest green felt.

We went choppin’ for Christmas trees this past weekend, an annual family event for The Wife™. The entire time I was Old Man Cranky. Not because it was cold. Not because I soaked my entire ass and left leg in freezing water by laying on the ground to cut down a tree for my sister-in-law, but because I was losing valuable time for painting. My insanity knows no bounds, for when I start getting peeved about not having sufficient time to paint, you know I have one foot in the door of the asylum already.

Inherited from my father, I have internal time tables, strict plans that MUST BE ADHERED TO AT ALL COSTS. The problem is, that I never seem to externalize these plans to others, nor are they ever all that reasonable. The fact that I expected to travel to southern Indiana, cut down six trees and return in the span of 45 minutes (budgeted in my head, rather fairly I’d say), turned out to be ridiculous. In reality, we were gone from about 8 a.m. until about 4 p.m. This made me steam. Steam for painting? Hello doctors with the pretty white coats! What the hell is wrong with me?

I am trying to curb this, though. While the inner dialog in my retardo-brain barks about the idiocy of lights on bushes or how terrible that ceramic wreath looks, I actually am holding back (I’m sure The Wife™ doesn’t think so). And I’m afraid my miserliness brings her down . But last night after dinner I started a fire, put on some Christmas music and we spent an hour or so decorating the tree and drinking hot chocolate out of little mugs shaped like snowmen.
It was quite nice. I couldn’t even help but laugh at Jonas’ contribution to the entire effort:

I hope The Wife™ realizes that I’m trying to undo whatever caused this Grinch-y-ness in me.

But I am drawing the line at the ceramic choo-choo train with LED lighting. I thought you had taste, woman. And dignity…