A Christmas Story and Figurative Language Freebies

Warning. This is long. (But don’t worry – you get a freebie at the end!) It’s long because it’s about Christmas (kind of) and I am what has been called a “Christmas Crazy.” By this, it is meant that I love Christmas. Not just the day or the day before, or presents or whatever. I LOVE CHRISTMAS from week I get out for Thanksgiving until January. Because of this,

I put up the tree by myself.

I put up all the decorations in the kitchen myself.

I put up all the decorations in the living room myself.

I do all the Christmas shopping myself.

I wrap all the presents myself.

I put up everything. Myself.

I do this because no one wants to help. By which I mean, my boyfriend doesn’t want to help.
“I’m going to buy some lights and put them up outside the house today,” I told him last Saturday.

“That’s nice, hun,” he responded.

He didn’t offer to help, exactly, so I thought I’d give him another chance.

“Yeah, I’m going to hang them up with the staple gun. I have the ladder already…”

“Okay, that’s good,” he said.

Hmmm… not biting. Let’s frame this differently.

“Yeah, I’m going to have to be pretty careful. You know how my driveway is slanted and the roof is peaked in the middle? I’m probably going to have to be pretty high up the ladder. Like, almost at the top. And I’ll be on that slanted driveway.”

“Yeah. You should be careful.”

This was becoming a battle of passive aggressiveness. He couldn’t not know what I was trying to say. He just didn’t want to acknowledge what I was trying to say, because then he might have to help me. I decided to give it one more try.

“I’m a little worried about it. You know, our custodian fell off his roof the other day, putting up lights.”

“Wow. Well, be careful!” he said, cheerfully.

Needless to say, I climbed the ladder myself and began stapling in lights. Of course, three quarters of the way through, I ran out of lights. I. Ran. Out. Of. Lights. For any of you who has put up Christmas lights, you know this is one of the most terrible things that can happen. You’re up on a ladder, grouchy about putting up these stupid lights, when you were the only one who wanted them up in the first place, and your hands are all chapped and the ladder keeps wiggling like you’re gonna fall off it, and you keep stapling crooked and you think, “Just one more string,” and then you’re out of lights. It stinks.

Then, I realized I had been stapling up the wrong lights. What? you ask. The wrong lights? How can they be wrong? Aren’t they Christmas lights?

Yes, they were Christmas lights. But they were green. Like the kind you put on a green tree – the light bulbs were white, but the string was green. GREEN! On my white-trimmed house! How did I put up three strings of lights and not notice that they were green? Yes, I know it’s not the MOST important thing, for the string to be white. But I’m not exactly loaded. These lights were going to have to last me for several years. And I didn’t like them.

So I went to Target and bought some more.

Of course, first, I tried passive aggressively (at this point, you’re saying, “Why? It clearly doesn’t work.” to get my boyfriend to either 1. buy the lights for me or 2. put them up for me. Nope, I wish you had been around to warn me, because it didn’t work. I just did it myself. I pulled down all the green ones and went to Target to get some white ones. And then I went home.

I was about three quarters of the way done, and I ran out of light. Not lightS, but light, as in light from the sun. Not feeling very comfortable perched at the top of the ladder, stapling up lights in the dark, I decided to wait and finish them the next time I had a chance. Which, of course, was a week later, aka today.

This morning, I finished putting up all the lights. I dragged the ladder around, probably giving my neighbors a very Chevy Chase in Christmas Vacation-y show, and managed to attach all the lights to the house. Satisfied, I flipped the switch and was prepared to bathe in the glory of a well-lit house on the middle of a winter’s day.

I stood admiring my handiwork. Until I noticed that there was a chunk of lights that wasn’t lit up. It wasn’t lit up! IT WASN’T LIT UP! I nearly lost it. By which I mean, I lost it. I threw a private tantrum inside my house, disgracefully ‘slam-bangin’ things around, as my mother would say, and dragged the ladder back over to the burned out part of the lights. Clambering up the ladder, I traded all the unlit lights for a new light bulb until I finally found the loose one (not burned out; just loose) and shoved it back in its socket. They lit up and I was happy again.

Ah, this peaceful time of year makes me happy.

Anyway, for those of you who would like to know about school stuff, my sister-in-law, who teaches fifth grade, asked me to make her some posters for figurative language and poetry structures. The figurative language poster set includes simile, metaphor, alliteration onomatopoeia, personification and imagery.

Grab the the whole set of figurative language here at my TPT store!

Get your metaphor and simile freebie here!

Then we got a little excited (happens to everyone when they’re doing cute classroom stuff, right?) and we put together some posters for the special structures of poetry: stanzas, repetition, and rhythm & meter. Grab them at my TPT store here!

Happy Teaching!

P.S. I let my boyfriend read my lights story and he got kind of sad. Apparently, it’s not nice that I’m portraying him as “unsupportive”. I put this in quotation marks because they are his words. However, he did admit that he knew what I was doing when I was passively aggressively trying to sneak him into helping me with the lights, so I don’t feel that bad about it.

P.P.S. Our custodian is okay.

P.P.P.S. If you want to give me something for Christmas that isn’t very expensive, and is also free, you can give me a comment because they make me happy!