Is it just me?

Or does it feel like this year FLEW by? Like even more quickly than usual? I mean, it seems like just a couple weeks ago that I went downstairs to the Whole Foods in our temporary-apartment building and bought the necessary ingredients for Christmas cookies... I can remember mixing up the dough in my tiny kitchen, in preparation for a night of cookie-baking and Elf-watching with Eric. I don't think that first batch lasted more than a day... I made more cookies a few days before Christmas in our rental condo -- we'd JUST moved in, so boxes were haphazardly strewn about the condo, and half of my kitchen utensils were still missing. But I made a point to find what I needed to make cookies -- because Eric never would've forgiven me if I'd used the "I can't find my rolling pin" excuse for neglecting to make more cookies...

Last year, because of our moves and the fact that we were far from settled, I didn't even THINK about putting up my Christmas tree. All of my holiday decorations were in storage, and even if I'd bothered to find them, decorations of any kind would've served as nothing more than extra clutter in our already cluttered condo. But THIS year, we have our own place, and although I can definitely do more to de-clutter (especially since Rick decided to build a new computer and there are now random parts/boxes in our living room... ohhh so many random boxes...), at least we have a bit more space and a nice tree-appropriate location in front of the windows overlooking our balcony.

So yesterday, we trekked over to our storage unit down the street to look for boxes of Christmas stuff. We have a history of needing to find seemingly unimportant (and usually very small) things in our storage unit... so many bad memories... don't remind me. But in the course of searching for Christmas stuff, we serendipitously came across something I've been looking for since we moved up here -- the magnet for my treadmill. It's attached to a bungee cord, and you're supposed to wear it on your wrist while you're on the treadmill -- the point being that if you fall off, the magnet disconnects from the treadmill and it automatically stops. I never actually wear it... but the treadmill won't START unless that magnet is in place. And since I was unable to find the magnet, I couldn't use my treadmill when we first moved into our new place. I tried to find a refrigerator magnet or something that would trick the treadmill into thinking the magnet was there, but I couldn't find one that was big enough. Fortunately, dad has the exact same treadmill, and he was nice enough to bring his bungee-corded magnet up so I could use it for my treadmill. And dad DID manage to find a suitable magnet to replace the cord -- but now he can actually have the real magnet back.

And we also found the Christmas stuff, in case you were wondering. I just finished putting the tree up, as Rick reminded me that this is actually the first Christmas that Riff has seen a tree. I braced myself for an onslaught of curious cat hijinks, but surprisingly, it was Piva who was the bigger nuisance. (Although Riff HAS already managed to knock one of the ornaments off the tree...) I also realized that I need about two more strings of lights for my tree... it's looking a little sparse. Oh well -- no way am I heading out to a store this weekend, so I'll just save that for next year...