Christmas Boxes and the Darn Garage

Thanksgiving finally came and went and now we usher in the Christmas Season. The stores are all ready to turn around their profit margins and the little ones remember that they were supposed to be good all year and decide to cram it all in less than a month in the hopes that Sandy Claws will forget that they colored on the wall last spring. Melissa has decided to start a new after Thanksgiving tradition of getting up before the Sun, driving to retail outlets, and spending money while trying not to get trampled in the store. That sounded like so much fun to me that I decided to wish her well the night before and pull the blanket over my head when she awoke.

Another tradition, that hopefully will not be repeated, is finding the Christmas boxes. For those of you that do not know we have moved several times in the past year. Each of these times has been within months of Christmas. The first move was in August/September of 2007. Boy was that garage packed to the rafters. I was somehow able to find those Christmas boxes with very little effort and all went well. We had just finished the Christmas fest when we received the call from the owners of the house; they were moving back to California in 30 days. Great. Another move. We took the tree down and boxed everything in the house back up. We moved and filled another garage. Fast forward to the day after Thanksgiving 2008.

It has now been almost one year since our last move. When loading the garage I thought I was being smart by placing all of the holiday decorations-Halloween and Xmas-in one place. I open the garage door and step over multiple items and grab the big green plastic Xmas tub. I crack the baby open. What do I find? Empty ornament boxes and a broken macaroni necklace. Expletives ensue. Once my ranting is complete I do a complete 360 degree rotation in place looking for any box that may have Xmas materials in it. My eye catches on nothing.

Now to put things in perspective there are many boxes in my garage. Okay, so maybe there is a plethora of boxes. The task seems daunting. Well, Melissa is out on her crazy minded new tradition mentioned above; Brighid is watching some sort of annoying program on television. What else do I have to do today? Not much of anything really. I shall tackle this garage and win!

I grab Brighid's radio. Dial in to the local station that goes all Xmas after Thanksgiving to get me in the spirit of finding those darn boxes. I even go so far as to pour myself a glass of Egg Nog. I am set.

I tear through boxes looking for those accursed Xmas items. I find none. If you have ever seen cartoons where the main character is looking for something in a room/box/somewhere and that room/box/somewhere is filled to the rafters you would have noticed that stuff just takes wing out the door. The main character then finds that proverbial needle in the haystack and all is well. Hey, it took them 10 seconds and they did not even break a sweat. Imagine that scenario except add five hours, much sweating, more foul language, and the random places that the Xmas items are located and you come close to what happened in my garage.

Approximately two hours into the search my loving mother calls me to ask how things are going. I hope I was civil and replied, "All is well, I am just finding the Xmas decorations and I cannot feel better." Though I think it was a bit different. I do recall saying that I was cleaning the garage quite by accident because I could not find the Xmas boxes. There is silence on the other end of the line. Mom? Mother? Hello? "You're doing what?" Well at that point I was sweeping the floor of a section of the garage and related that to her. Her response, "That sounds like fun! Would you like me to come over and help?" Okay, so that is a complete fabrication and the real response was, "You actually have floor to sweep in there?" Thanks mom.

At the end of this five hour session I have completed three things and resolved to never do another.

1. The boxes were found. A Sierra Nevada beer box, of which I would have never purchased that many, has ornaments in it. A Staples box has ornaments and tree lights in it. And a box that I have no idea where it came from has the rest. 

2. The garage has a floor and there is more order to the madness.

3. I have my own ManCave in the garage with my swords, trophies, and a small homework station located.

4. I am never doing this again. The Xmas boxes are all going to be labeled with a big black marker and placed in a conspicuous location.