But if I'm being honest, if I wasn't suffering from an ear infection and had low energy, then it may not have happened.
Going back to the beginning of the story though...
There was no post from yesterday, because essentially there was no yesterday... Ma did her own thing and I went to the supermarket in the morning, then came home and pretty much did nothing for the rest of the day. I just couldn't summon up the energy for much. And there's not really much point trying to watch anything important since I can't hear that great, and doubly so if I wanted to lay on the bed to do it, since I can only get comfy on one side, and that makes me functionally deaf. Not to mention, likely to fall asleep.
So I didn't do much of anything.
Roll on this morning, I wasn't up and out the house as early as I would have been normally, because mornings are just too damn hard... I'm mostly wandering around with a head full of fluff, and I feel like the fever part of the infection is worse in the mornings. So it's an effort just to feed and bathe myself, let alone getting out the front door.
I didn't rush, I just took my time and I think I was at Ma's a little over an hour later than "previously". Which is still early, but not regular early. And it did feel like it took more of my concentration than normal just operating the car.
Anyway, there was also more dithering around once I got to Ma's place, even though I'd eaten at my place (for the antibiotics, of course), but I dithered, she dithered, we dithered.
Eventually we got down to it.
First the white tree went up. And mostly due to the aforementioned lack of energy, I did 90% sitting on my butt on the floor. Usually I switch between sitting and standing or there might be standing and bending (with the old tree anyway), but not this time... effort, not currently on speaking terms with me.
But it still worked.
I did notice the aforementioned note inside the lid of the baubles box and was ruminating on that, and the fact that it would also mean that I wouldn't have to be bending and stretching and choosing different heights and levels for each bauble, this was a pure "start from the top and work down" kind of idea.
First, however, there appeared to need to be math. Math is not my friend usually, but my mushy little brain at present and math... forget it. I worked out that we had five different colours of baubles and there were potentially seven "layers" of tree (the giant top cone, then six sets of branches)... this was where my brain and math parted company.
But given that we only have a minimal amount of blue baubles, I knew that could only be one row... and we have SO many red baubles that those should be the top cone... so after some discussion with Ma... as well as the fact that while I was okay with the idea, it's her tree and she has to live with it every day, I just need to visit it once again when we do Christmas goodies, and again on actual Christmas.
Eventually (and honestly, fuck only knows how) a decision was reached that, yes, we would do the rainbow tree.
It's definitely a weirder experience doing it this was from the way I'm used to. Normally it's all "don't get this one particular colour to close to other examples of that same particular colour in the overall colour schematic of the tree" kind of thing... this is all "bugger that shit, if it's red, it's on the top cone, gold, next two rows, and so on".
I did have a moment just after we were done when I really wanted to unwind the twisted coloured fairy lights we have and regrouping the colours to match the tree... not seriously or anything... just an idle thought. A more serious thought was that if we do this again then it might be an idea if we get a set of white lights.
I will say though, a little like the surprise I had that the white tree worked in the first place, that it worked as well as it did. I wasn't sure until it was finished, because it needs to full effect for it to work at all... but it just looks really good.
We tidied up somewhat, had some lunch and then got started on wrapping presents.
I'm not on my A game, clearly, so it took me a while to really find my design game for this year. And as usual Princess T and Miss Oh both came under the gap. I don't have an issue with how we arranged their presents from an engineering standpoint, but we've done a whole lot better in previous years, design-wise.
We really didn't have that much stuff to wrap... but even so we didn't finish up until around 5:30, then there was the usual slightly headless meanderings in ever decreasing circles to get everything tidied up (but so that Ma could still get to it all) before we had some dinner.
And that was pretty much it... after dinner I headed home.
Although given the size of the box I'm planning on using for Ma's presents, I think it will literally need to be "under" the tree... as in, it'll have the tree sitting on top of it.
Anyway, I should take myself off to bed soonish...
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