'Twas the week and a half before Christmas when Evaline brought home a little pine tree to decorate.

The iguana was a big fan of Christmas. Back at home, she and her family would make a big production of it. Bringing home a tree on the first weekend of December. Sitting around in pajamas until late in the afternoon decorating the tree and the house. Singing songs, drinking cider. Throwing wreaths at each other.

Well, she'd procrastinated too much to do this on the first weekend. Middle of the week in the middle of the month was almost as good!

And sure, she didn't have the same amount of decorations. Or a lot of room to decorate, in her apartment. Couldn't do anything with a lawn because she didn't have one. But it wasn't about the quantity! It was about- Hm. She guessed it wasn't about the company either. She lives alone. And her family lived too far to visit and she didn't have space in her apartment for a lot of people anyway.

It was about something though because it cheered her immensely to sit and put tiny ornaments on the tiny tree. It was probably about the holiday spirit or the joy of calling into work sick so she can decorate a tiny tree while sitting around in her pajamas.

She probably could have waited until the holiday break.

Ah, but she was also going to use this day to plan the Christmas party for the school staff! She should have been planning that for a while too, actually.

She'd procrastinated too much on that too.

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Evaline is not altogether a very together person.

She loves Christmas, she gets very excited for Christmas, she's not any more organized for Christmas than she is any other time.

(Except when it comes to organizing spare clothes for Virginia. That's one of the times when Evaline is on the ball.)

Evaline is going to hold the best damn Christmas party she can, within the budget Kayda left her. But she's also going to be scrambling to get it together until the last minute and is going to spend part of the party napping.

Evaline is also a little lonely on Christmas. She lives far away from her family and her friends all have their own Christmases to go to.

So her bad work ethic is at play but she also just needed a day to herself to do a small activity that she enjoys as the year winds down.

But after she finishes decorating the tree and putting up what scant other decorations she has, she is definitely going to lay on her couch all day, idly thinking of Christmas party ideas.

She'll only come up with her best ideas when it seems like she's running out of time. Panic is her muse.

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Evaline Churchell owned by me
Art by  leksi.