To say Monday was a blue Monday might be a bit of a stretch, but sometimes Mondays are a bit melancholy. Returning to a work week after a holiday doesn’t help either. Too much to catch up on. Too little time to get the catching up done.
But, to say Monday was a blue Monday this week — maybe, maybe not.
It seems we somehow caught up on our rest and recovered from our overindulgence on turkey, dressing, and all the fixings, and some pretty tasty bread pudding to boot, by Sunday evening and settled in under the full moon to begin to contemplate Christmas.
That alone could make a Monday a blue Monday if one were to dwell on it for very long. With a full week of November left following Thanksgiving Day it would seem we had an extra long month. But, all of a sudden it is gone and December is here and at our house we’ve got a lot to do, and a long way to go before, we’ll be ready for Christmas Day.
There are lists to be made, and shopping to be done. The wreaths have yet to be hung on the front windows and the front door is barren as well. There are lights to be lit and carols to be sung and I noticed Monday morning as I drove away from the house that the little birds are hungry, and need some feed in their feeders too.
Ole Snot, the yard dog that y’all know is not really our yard dog, needs some fresh straw in her house that we fixed up to keep her warm and dry and it will be dark, and might even be raining, before I return home each night.
To have gone so long without even as much as a drop of rain, it seems now that there are things to be done on the outside, it comes a downpour just when I think I might get outside to get those things done.
Sometimes I think we’ll cut back here or there. Maybe not put a candle in every window, or a wreath on every door, until we get started and it looks like something is missing, and not quite as festive, and I crawl back up into the loft and pull out another box or two and we start all over again.
I can’t imagine these days how we ever got everything done years ago, Christmas decorating wise, in just the weekend after Thanksgiving. And, that included going and picking out a Christmas tree on a Christmas tree lot somewhere.
Everything is fake now and only requires a bit of fluffing up and dusting off to get the glistening going.
As far as fake trees go, a few weeks ago I saw an advertisement on the Internet for a super-discounted, too-good-to-be-true, close-out sale on artificial Christmas trees from Balsam Hill. Their ads are on the television, and radio, and all over social media, and the one I spotted led me to their website where everything seemed on the up and up.
I ordered the tree, charged a little over $50 to my American Express, and got a tracking number and everything, and wife, Danny, and I sat back and waited for our delivery. After about a week or so I checked on the package and the tracking number led me to some place in China that didn’t have Balsam Hill anywhere in the title and I had to translate Chinese to English to find out where our tree might be.
Finding that a bit odd, I thought I might go back to the original Balsam Hill site we ordered from and see if it was somehow tied in to the Chinese address. Nope, it apparently was not, and not only that, the site was gone — completely gone. The real Balsam Hill was still there, but the link in my confirmation email led to nowhere. It was a fake site.
That is when I figured out I might have been duped and tried to contact American Express and see if they might be able to help me. Nope, “your fault” they basically said. They probably were saying “sucker” under their breath too.
We did still have a tracking number, and it was still tracking, and eventually informed us that our package had landed in the good ole U.S. of A., and was well on its way to our door. We were out of town at that time and a little while later that tracking number told us the package was out for delivery, and shortly thereafter delivered.
We have security cameras on the house, so I checked my phone to see if there was a package at the kitchen door where I asked that it be left, and the answer again was nope! Figuring it had been left somewhere just out of view of the camera we were eager to get home and see what that delivery might actually be.
Upon our arrival, there wasn’t any package at or near the kitchen door, or any other door, but there was a small package in the mailbox. It seems the wonderful, marvelous, spectacular deal on the fake Christmas tree had turned out to be a not-so-good-of-a-deal on a fake diamond ring.
Fake is fake is fake, I suppose!
Sucker? Yep. Christmas shopping done for my sweetie? I reckon so, and I didn’t even know it!!!!
But, you know what else, even after having found out that we had been scammed, the building excitement of finding out what that tracking number was tracking reminds me of the feeling, as a child, I had on Christmas Eve waiting and wondering what we would find the next morning beneath the tree.
So, if you are feeling blue come Monday, just think about me and have a chuckle for free. That’s what I did, and from now on, what I will always do.
Let the holidays begin.
