Lights, lights, lights

I like 10:30 at night. It makes me feel like it's still early enough to finish the movie and maybe have a cookie, but late enough to allow for a bedtime that gives plenty of sleep but won't make me an old person who gets up a 4:30 a.m. to wait for the newspaper. At any rate, at 10:30 p.m. this evening, everyone else in my house is asleep; I've not yet put on my jammies; Sherlock Holmes is mostly over; and a cold glass of milk sounds like a lovely nightcap.
As for productivity out of today, I will brag that we got our tree ... much cheaper than last year ... at Home Depot, transported it in Brian's rental car, and have put it up and lighted it. The initial plan was to buy the tree at the same lot we bought last year's, but their $69 price tag for a 5-foot tree turned us off and sent us to Home Depot. HD's $35 5-foot tree was much more appealing, and cuter.
I had thought that this year, I would let Brian do the lights on the tree. You see, I'm crazy freakish about the complexity of my Christmas tree lights (thanks, Mom!), though felt too tired psychologically to get them done this time. It takes me about 45 minutes to do them to my satisfaction, and I end up sweaty, dirty and sappy all over the arms. So, to Brian goes the light strings. He started out with the all-red strands (ugh!), and was about to start placing them from the bottom, but my outburst preceded my head and I corrected that potentially psychotic mistake. Anyway, to the red. So he covered the whole tree in the all-red lights, which looked fine, but then he decided to only place one string of the multi-colored lights ... at the bottom ... with one line going up the back of the tree for some inexplicable reason. Then, frustrated with his effort, he dropped the lights and told me that I can finish them and make them better. He had actually done most of the grunt work, but I still spent another 30 minutes fixing his lights and adding more multi-colored ones on my own.
And honestly, once I'm done with the lights, I need to rest and motivate myself for the ornaments. But, since we had lights to put up outside yet, I have left the tree for now. Tomorrow, when Katy comes over, we'll all put the ornaments on the tree. Another set of hands is a good thing.
Also, we did get them done, and our outdoor lights look pretty awesome.
Sydney is freakin' loving this holiday this year. I think this might be the best Christmas ever.