Sigh. Ten days to Christmas. The presents are all bought and awaiting the wrapping session ('DON'T YOU DARE COME IN HERE!!' shouted furiously at the man on the other side of the door rattling the door lever and my cage). The garland is wrapped around the hall mirror with the lights twinkling merrily (ok, not really - Paul's Asperger's is not conducive to twinkling anything. I always set all the lights to steady-on to avoid triggering a bit of a meltdown). The tree...

Sigh. Ten days to Christmas, the tree has been sitting on the hall table since Thanksgiving night (yes, we live in the UK. Yes, technically we're British. But I brought Thanksgiving with me when I came over to marry Paul and part of our tradition is to decorate beginning Thanksgiving night) with the new fairy lights in an organised heap at the base. Because I, the designated lights stringer-wrapper, cannot work out how to get the three foot tree wrapped to best lighting effect. Believe me, I have tried. And tried. And tried.

Today those *%$&&£"* lights are going on and I am at the point I do not care what the end lighting effect is. (But I really do. Sigh)

In my worst moments ('Dammit I'm NEVER going to get these *%$&&£"* lights on!') I silently congratulate myself that at least I haven't (yet) completely lost it and repeated the utter frustration of Thanksgiving 1998 attempts to light the tree. Oh wow, was that a day - after hours of trying unsuccessfully to get hundreds of fairy lights artfully wrapped around the 7 foot 'deluxe artificial Christmas tree with realistic foiliage' (said the advert and box and salesperson), I gave up and (here's the deeply shameful bit) drop-kicked that poor (and hideously expensive) tree from the dining room through to the living room to the hallway leading to the bedrooms and back through the kitchen to the dining room where I (ahem) repeated the drop-kicking.

I think I did that three times, that circuit of the house we were living at the time. OK, I had something of an excuse - Thanksgiving Day 1998 Crusty came up from his friend's house in Pensacola, ate everything on the dinner table, then loaded a U-Haul van with nearly everything in the house including the fridge-freezer-pantry contents. When I objected (as he and his 'friend' began their dismantling of our home), Crusty opened the front door to admit a sheepish sheriff who informed me Crusty had taken advantage of an old 'durable power of attorney' to transfer EVERYTHING into his name and there was nothing he, the sheriff could do to help Fox and I.

The shock left me paralysed until the Saturday. Fox had a premonition Crusty was going to do something like what Crusty did and had been moving food from the pantry to his room for weeks - he'd managed to almost completely fill his bedroom cupboard with tins of soup and fruit, bags of beans and rice, and other staples we lived on (rationed, and yes, it was that bad) for a fair good bit of time after Crusty did that Thanksgiving raid.

Saturday morning 16 year old Fox asked when/if I was going to decorate the house for Christmas. Crusty had left us the decorations. And after trying all day Saturday and into the afternoon on Sunday to get the lights on the tree and I'd collapsed in a heap next to the now bedraggled tree, I told Fox to remove the lights (now in a furious tangle around the poor tree) while I went to the hardware store.

Where I bought 'the recommended amount' of clip-on candle lights (new out that year and wow-wow-wow do clip-on candle lights make for a stunning Christmas tree lighting effect!). Came home. Finished straightening the tree. Hung the baubles and miniature icicles then clipped on the new lights. That was THE prettiest Christmas tree Fox and I ever had in the years after Crusty's Thanksgiving Decampment.

My struggles with fairy light strands this year (the past several years we've contented ourselves with the pathetically sparse 'pre-lit' lighting effect that came with the tree) are something of a milestone for me - I can FINALLY look back at the horrific years Crusty caused Fox and I to endure with less pain and anger. Telling Paul about it last night, I was able to laugh about it.

We're buying a 'pre-lit' Balsam Hill six foot tree after the New Year. I've collected (and am still collecting) enough baubles that even Paul noticed we need a much bigger tree. I'm going out to the front hall to get those *%$&&£"* lights wrapped and the tree finally decorated but I will be spending 2018 using kitchen roll tubing and mini-clothes peg clips (and paint pots) to fashion miniature fairy light 'candles' - the ones available to buy here are ginormous, far too big to clip onto even a six foot tree. How do I know this?

I know this because I bought two strands (24 candles per) at the local ironmonger a few years ago in hopes of using them on the tree. Uh, no. The weight of the things pulled the tree over. I popped next door and tried them on the neighbours 7 foot tree only to find the weight of the candles caused severe droop of tree branches.

But, wow, do those candles look AMAZING on the two window sills facing the street before our house!