Life in the future: winter storm edition

There's an ice storm raging in central Michigan. When we talked Saturday evening, my sister said her GMC Yukon was encased in 1/4 inch at her home in Lansing. The Lansing State Journal reported that the ice is expected to continue to build through Sunday morning "with as much as a half-inch of accumulation possible."

State and local police are issuing the usual advisories to stay off the roads, but it was this life in the future moment that led to this post:

"The Michigan State Police were advising people to take appropriate precautions, including charging cellphones or other necessary electronic devices in case of a power outage."

These are not the appropriate precautions of my childhood. Or even most of my adulthood. But they're certainly the appropriate precautions of the now.

Tree trimming progress report

Tree trimming in the Fitzgerald Family took place the last Sunday in Advent, unless that fell on Christmas Eve in which case we decorated the tree the Sunday before. I've not kept that tradition in adulthood. The tree goes up when it goes up. These days, it doesn't even go up every year, much as I like it when it does. A few years ago, I bought a pre-lit artificial tree, thus saving me the annoyance of getting the tree straight in the stand and anchored to the ceiling and/or walls as well asa few hours of stringing lights (lots and lots and lots of lights). I never liked either of those tasks, much as the latter became significantly less painful when I discovered Fraser Firs. As the Fraser Fir wikipedia page says:

Fraser Fir is widely used as a Christmas tree. Its mild fragrance, shape, strong limbs, and ability to retain its soft needles (which do not prick easily when hanging ornaments) for a long time when cut make it one of the best trees for this purpose.

The Fitzgerald Family tree was most often a Blue Spruce. They're pretty, but they prick like hell. A Fraser Fir tends to be pricy, and I haven't yet found a tree lot I'm inclined to return to anywhere nearby. And weaving 1500 or so lights through the tree was still a lot of work. So I went artificial, finding it better than no tree at all.

The tree is up this year and all of the lights are plugged in and working. It's even beginning to look like it may get decorated.

On Wednesday, email to my sister included this tidbit:

Six bins and six boxes of decorations plus 1 plastic gingerbread boy moved from flamingo loft into house. One box of decorative lights and two tinsel garlands left in flamingo loft. I do declare that this is the year I'm going to get rid of decorations I no longer want. Or, at the very least, I will put them in bins marked "Don't Bother!" as well as "Christmas" -- Famous Last Words....

Friday night, in describing my Christmas tree to a friend, I wrote:

The angel, made by Auntie Bun (my great-aunt, godmother, and co-founder of Twinzy Toys) goes on first, before any decorations are hung. So I have to search the bins and boxes to find it.

Saturday night, I cleared off the coffee table so as to use it as a staging area for the individual boxes of ornaments inside all those bins. And because clean. I moved all the bins and boxes into the living room and set up the ladder so as to be able to reach the top of the tree. Then I opened one bin, then another, and another, until I'd looked in each. There wasn't a square-topped box labeled "Angel (Tree top) in any of them. Uh-oh.

Instead of being sensible and taking it as a sign that it was well past time to go to bed, I thought a bit and climbed the stairs to the Flamingo Loft over the garage. Sure enough, there were two more bins marked "Christmas" sitting apart from where the other Christmas bins and boxes had been. Huh. I thought all the bins I used last year never made it beyond the landing at the bottom of the stairs, yet here they were.

Oh. That's right. I didn't put the tree up last year. I piled gifts in the chair I have to move to make room for the tree, and let that be enough. That doesn't explain the bins at the bottom of the Flamingo Loft stairs, but life's just a mystery, y'know?

At least the Mystery of the Missing Angel is solved. She's back in her natural habitat.