Welcome back to Austen Promises and the Writer’s Journal!
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You may wonder how in the world the title of this journal entry relates to writing. Never fear, I’m about to tell you.
As I said in last week’s post, I bought a new Christmas tree this year. The old one was only six feet tall, and as my ceilings are nearly nine feet, the old tree was dwarfed by the room. I wanted an eight-foot tree, but they are hard to find, and when you do locate them, they’re expensive. Like, hundreds of dollars expensive. So, I went to Walmart and for less than $100, got a 7’ 5” tree. I brought it home in late October and leaned it against the wall in the drawing room. Trust me when I say, that tree is heavy. LOL 
Now, I must make it clear here that I am NOT Martha Stewart. I vacuum every couple of months, when the dog hair gets thick enough to bug me, and I dust once or twice a year. I’m allergic to dust, and dusting sends me into an allergy attack. Of course, so does dust just laying around on everything, but still …
So, before the tree could go up, the living room needed cleaning. Hahaha! Yeah. LOL I did manage to clean the carpet in the “potty area” again, and move the couch back. I also cleaned the carpet where the couch sat and vacuumed the front of the room. Then, I spent nearly two hours the evening of the day after Thanksgiving putting the new tree up.
Two hours??? Yes, two. This included tracking the ladder down and bringing it to the drawing room. And a snack break. There’s only so much boredom and stress a girl can take all at once. By bedtime, it was too dark in the room to see for sure that I had “fluffed” every single branch, so I decided to wait for morning and recheck it before doing anything else. That tree was so dusty that I had to use my neti pot and wash my face, hands, and arms, and braid my hair, to get rid of the allergy symptoms.
So, it is now two days later as I write this, and … no more cleaning has been done and no decorating. I wanted to do it today but was just too tired. I’m not sure when it will be done, either. Hopefully, before this coming weekend.
Now to the part where I tell you what this has to do with writing.
If I’m decorating for Christmas, I’m not writing. That’s what one has to do with the other. And, I’m beyond tired of everything else coming between me and writing. Writing is my job as well as my joy, it’s what pays the bills and gives me a high.
That being said, I can look back and see where I went wrong. (You know I will always do this, because every time something goes wrong for me, it has its root in a mistake I made.)
First, I did not clean that drawing room in October. That should have been done before Halloween. Instead, the Thanksgiving holiday loomed up on me before I realized it was there. In my head, I had a couple more weeks.
Second, I did not get up and put that tree together first thing in the day. I could have gotten the entire room, and the dining room, decorated in one go if I had started early. Instead, I waited until 8 pm, which leads me to the next poor decision in the sequence.
Third, I should have cleaned during the movie like I had planned. I jumped the gun with the tree. Granted, the movie was boring, but it would have been just as boring no matter what I did, so I should have stuck to the plan. I could have spent Saturday morning putting the tree up and decorating.
Further, I wasted Thanksgiving Day by watching that blasted parade in my recliner and then sleeping the afternoon away. I could have cleaned that day.
I do not currently have a plan to get the cleaning and decorating done. I need to write this week. NEED to write. Saturday is the Christmas luncheon for my RWA chapter. It’s possible I could get it done that day, but I really hope to do it some other day before then. That gives me five days from today. We shall see.
Or, someone could hire me a maid. 😉
Come back next Wednesday for another peek into my journal! <3
