Christmas Tree Brain

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Christmas Tree Brain won’t let me sleep at night, so I have to nap several times during the day to get through the wait to have my home upgraded…

 

Remember being a kid and having Christmas Tree Brain on Christmas Eve?

 

T’was the night before Christmas and all through the place

NO ONE was sleeping because I would pace!!!

 

As a wee one, I was on Happy Red Alert on Christmas Eve, knowing Santa would be stopping by that night to deposit treasures under our Christmas tree.

 

I don’t feel that way much anymore. Only when I’m thinking about my upcoming (when?!) chest masculinization surgery and what my side of this place will look like after the new carpets are in and the new flooring and quartz counter tops are in do I get the same kind of of giddy feeling. (Oh, and when I publish a new book and when my clients flip over something I’ve written for them, too…)

 

I sit here envisioning rooms, and putting different furniture in different rooms, and thinking about having my entertainment center and TV in my bedroom instead of the living/critter room so the living room can be configured with both recliners on one end and the futon on the other with the cabinet Dad made against the wall in the middle of the room against the wall instead of at one end…and maybe a new coffee table in the middle…

 

I imagine stepping out of bed onto the new plushy carpet instead of the indoor/outdoor carpet that’s there now… and preparing meals on quartz and washing new flooring that will actually look great after doing so.

 

The thing about my place right now is that, even when I clean it to surgical standards, it still looks like hell. I’m going to become such a Merry Maid when I finally have something that will look great every time I clean, instead of like a poor country cousin’s ramshackle, ill-used abode!

 

So that’s what has my brain working overtime. I’m antsy to reach the destination and behold the result.

 

The living room is all but empty except for the recliner I sit in and the futon, and the futon will go out out onto the porch next weekend when Phil is here to help move it.  (It would be there now but Jackie doesn’t want it on her front porch for that long… grrr!!!)

 

My den/workroom is 2/3rds filled with what came out of the living room, so I have this constant reminder of “impending change” looming behind me even as I type this…and it’s making me CRAZY!!!  It’s like, “OK, I’m ready–where the hell are the carpet layers?!!”   We’ve scheduled them for the 25th because Casey will be staying here for a week then and she will be helping me move stuff back into the proper rooms as the carpets get laid.

 

After the first carpet goes in, the workers will have to take a lunch break or some kind of break while Jackie, Casey and I move the living room stuff into the newly-carpeted living room so the furniture from the bedroom can be brought into the den so the men can work in the bedroom… Logistics, man!

 

The following day (or week), the flooring can be laid on my side of the house unless Jackie’s guy is planning to do my side, too. If he is, my flooring will have to wait until Jackie’s kitchen floor is ready to go. She’s having a huge island taken out the middle of her kitchen and an L-shaped arm added to one of her counters, so that has to be done before the flooring (which will be the same on both sides of the house, as will the quartz counter tops) can be laid.

 

The problem is that her guy is very allergic to cats, and I have three, which is why we’re doing the carpets first (to get rid of as much embedded cat hair and dander as possible by removing the old carpets). If he isn’t going to do the flooring, I may be able to have my side done sooner than hers. Not sure. I’ll ask Jason if he’d charge much more to come out and finish hers later if Jackie’s guy isn’t going to do it and mine.  I hate to inflict agony on Jackie’s guy if I can avoid that for about the same price!

 

There’s a cork floor in my bathroom (bad idea!). I need to ask if I need to remove that (and the existing linoleum in my kitchen and hallways) before he lays the new flooring down. In either case, the toilet will have to be removed to place new flooring in there. That’s no biggy. I can do that. Jason doesn’t think I’ll need to remove the existing linoleum before he puts down the new flooring, but he hasn’t seen it yet, and I suspect he might change his mind when he does (tomorrow). It was laid over older linoleum, so there are two layers there already. He says that’s usually not a problem. we’ll see!

 

I also have to replace part of the floor under my refrigerator. That won’t be a problem. It’s a hatch of sorts so we can get under the floor for repairs, but there’s another way under the house, too, so maybe we can just replace the hatch and seal it off for good this time…

 

All these details! Are you asleep yet?  But they’re all plaguing me right now. I have to remember to mention them all.

 

Plus: “Do we need to remove the wooden baseboards to lay the new carpet?” Stuff like that…

 

I’ve touched up the living room with paint wherever necessary so it looks pristine in there.

 

See what Christmas Tree Brain does to me? It puts me into high alert mode and makes me want to run, or ride a bike, or play pickle ball to use this pent-up anticipation energy.

 

I’m driving Jackie nuts: I just know it.  Whenever I try to share my excitement with her–or my latest idea re configuration of the furniture in the various rooms–she tolerates it begrudgingly, but my excitement sure isn’t contagious to her. “Whatever you want to do with your side of the house is fine with me. It’s your side of the house.” (Gee, thanks for the vote of ho-hum!!) But then, I have never have been able to get Jackie excited over anything I’ve done–from moving to work in Hollywood, to adopting Deaken, to becoming friends with the Kelleys, to writing books and winning writing awards, to anything) so I don’t know why this should surprise or distress me… it just always does! (We just aren’t wired the same. That’s for sure!)

 

(I have a plaque in my home that reads, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” I don’t think Jackie has experienced many of those, and I feel enormously sad about that, because she can’t experience it when it happens to anyone else, either, it seems. Unless it has happened to you, it’s hard to understand when it happens to someone else, I suppose. I can get drunk on another person’s happiness or excitement instantaneously!)

 

The good new is this: I feel positive and uplifted for the first time in a very long time… and there’s very little that can take the euphoria away from me. My spirit is flying so high, I’m on Cloud 9!

 

 

 

 

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Kris Smith

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