Getting back to ‘normal’

I’m not entirely sure what tradition dictates, but we got rid of our Christmas Tree on Tuesday of this week. I couldn’t wait any longer!

I’m not a total grinch, but our tree was far too big for the apartment. No matter where you looked, you could see it! And so while it was nice to have something festive to look at for a couple of weeks, by the day after Christmas, I was keen to see the back of it.

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As you might imagine, it’s far easier to get a pre-packaged tree into an apartment than it is to get a several-week-old, needle-dropping tree out of an apartment. Taking all the decorations off was one thing, but wrapping it up to take it down six floors to the basement was another thing entirely. It seemed to have grown in the intervening weeks and there was definitely no easy place to grab the tree and lift it.

After initially removing the decorations while I was still in my morning ‘desnudo‘ state, I just had to get dressed before attempting to move the tree. I had some painful moments of getting too close to the tree’s needles and frankly couldn’t imagine the reception I’d receive if I ended up going to A&E in the middle of a pandemic because I tried to move a Christmas tree naked. Don’t worry, there are no photos of this stage of the proceedings.

We ended up using an old duvet cover to gather it up and bring it downstairs. The struggle was as if we were trying to kidnap a living, breathing person! Every time we got one large branch inside the cover, another part of the tree would bounce up, narrowly missing an eye or an ear. It was exhausting. And painful.

Looking at the recycling ‘zone’ in our basement, we were the first apartment to rid themselves of their tree, but I don’t care. Our apartment is now back to normal in time for the new year and Frank has repotted several of our larger houseplants so they can thrive in the coming months. With the additional light that’s coming in the windows when they’re not blocked by a giant, sparkling tree.

Yes, I’m totally over Christmas and looking forward to the week ahead when I’ll return to work properly and won’t wake confused each morning, wondering what day of the week it is.