decorations

The year we were first married, we lived in a tiny 600-square-foot apartment in a large apartment complex.
That Christmas, there was a window decorating contest for the most festive apartment.

One thing about me is
I am terribly competitive.

I am not sure my husband was aware of my extreme competitiveness before this point.
Yet, he was about to find out how incredibly crazy I could be.

To top it all off, the prize money for the winner was $100.

Oh man!

Game on!

(Don’t judge. We were 20. $100 seemed like a fortune!)

So I began my quest to win.

First things first, I gathered our Christmas decorations.
Honestly, it wasn’t much.
It was our first Christmas. We had a used artificial Christmas tree and a few old ornaments.
That was about it.

No way we could win with that.

So, I raided the local dollar store.

At night I was even a sneaky Christmas ninja
And would drive around the apartment complex to scope out the competition.

And then go back to the dollar store to buy more Christmas crap.

When all was said and done, I had Clark W. Griswold-ed two tiny little apartment windows.

It was as if tacky Christmas barfed on my place,
…but only on the windows because those were all that counted for the competition.

How I even got all that stuff on my windows in the first place is still a mystery.

Umm…
I went a little overboard.

After I got the windows completely covered with all kinds of tackiness,
Stood back, looked at them, I thought,
“Oh man. What did I do?”

And although there was nothing wrong with wanting to win,
I totally got carried away.
Winning that dumb contest was my focus.
And nothing else.

Let’s not loose our focus this Christmas.

Let’s not be too busy trying to be the best
Or trying to make everything perfect
That we forget about what is truly important.

 

(Oh, and by the way, in case you were curious, I did win the contest. I had to make that clear, in case anyone doubted me.)