Today I upheld a fine family tradition... a trip to Peddler's Village with my parents! It was the perfect day for it - cold and clear. Our first stop was lunch at the Peddler's Pub. I had homemade vegetable soup (mmmm....) and a roast beef sandwich. Then, it was time to window shop! I didn't buy much this year, but we visited all my favorite places: the nut & candy store, the stationery store, the hat store, the Yankee candle shop. We skipped the bookstore (too depressing to go to a bookstore when I don't have money, lol) and the gingerbread house display (the line was WAY too long and no one felt like waiting). We stayed just long enough to see the lights come on when it got dark. A truly spectacular sight - I highly recommended it if you've never had the chance to see it. As we drove home, it started to flurry. The perfect end to the day! We also drove past Shady Brook Farms and caught a glimpse of their drive-through light display. (I really want to get there this year. If anyone's interested in getting a car together - and maybe a few thermoses of spiked hot cocoa - give me a call! It's $20 a carload, and I have a big car.)
When I got home, snow was still falling, and it was enough to cover the cars and the grass. Since I was in the mood for Christmasing, Sam and I decided to haul out the holly... I mean, the boxes of decorations from the garage. We were practically giddy with excitement. We lit a holly scented candle and put on a DVD of "A Christmas Carol." We started unpacking boxes and putting things in place. Then Sam asked which box had the lights. We rechecked the boxes, but couldn't find them. So we went back to the basement to see if we had missed a box. Nothing. I went up and asked our neighbor if maybe she took it up with her boxes by accident, and I found out that when she went down last weekend to get her decorations, she saw that 2 of her boxes were missing. She had to buy a whole bunch of new stuff to replace what was gone.
She told us she wrote a letter to our landlord, so Sam decided to give him a call. He apparently apologized and offered to reimburse us for what was stolen. I took a mental inventory and figured out what was in the missing box: lights for the tree and the window (at least 5 or 6 strands), the star for our tree, the new tree skirt that I bought last year (that matches our stockings), the electric candles for the window (which have been in my family since I was little), the garland of tinsel for our tree (at least 6 strands). As far as I can remember, that was all that was in there.
So now we have to go shopping tomorrow (with money we can't afford to spend right now) and buy things to replace what was stolen. Ugh. It really put a damper on the evening.
In retrospect, it could have been much worse. It could have been our tree, or our ornaments... but it's just so frustrating. And we have no way of knowing how the boxes went "missing." They're stored in a garage which is bolted shut from the outside and padlocked from the inside. Our neighbor had a friend who was storing things down there, so it's possible she took it. Our landlord's nephew has a key... maybe he took it. I just don't know why anyone would want our Christmas decorations.
So our fun-filled evening ended with much cursing and depressed sighs. And now I'm watching cheesy Hallmark channel Christmas movies and drinking my second rum and coke. Meh.
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