Slowly but surely I WILL have a tree...

Al and I went out to get a real live Christmas tree last week. We, in our own hapless grand tradition, picked the shittiest weather night we could manage. While it wasn't raining (as is our USUAL choice) is WAs "nut numbingly" cold. Al's phrase, but true even for me.

Literally it was 7 degrees out. We stopped at Panerra Bread for some coffee to "keep our hands warm" an were dismayed to find the coffee freezing up after ten minutes in the outdoors. The first lot we went to had all of their trees tied up so that they looked like one giant branch. We chose one that was (what we thought to be) big enough for our new living room. The guy untied it... lifted the thing over his head... and slammed it into the ground to make the branches "fluff out"... and nary a branch moved. Poor thing was frozen solid. However, about eleven THOUSAND needlecicles fled for their lives, ala Charlie Brown's tree. We took one look around, tried and failed miserably to stifle our hysterical laughter, realized that ALL the trees were tied, and thus ALL the trees would be frozen in the same manner, and left.

It was some time in the next hour at Home Depot's garden department that the freezing air sucked the christmas life out of me. Like my good humor thermostat hit zero, and this was no longer funny. I turned to Al and said, "Fuck this. Take me to Harrow's, we're getting a fake." Then my head spun and a chunk of frozen pea soup came shooting out of my mouth.

Al quietly prayed that Harrow's would still be open.

As we were driving back toward home we passed one more lot. Having thawed somewhat, and, well... we were THERE... we decided to try this one. All of the trees were open and on spikes, so you could see what they looked like. Plus, the guys working there were not stupid... they had a huge fire going. It took us nanoseconds to pay WAY too much for a really nice tree... that turned out to be roughly a foot too short for our new living room.

Now that tree has been up for about a week. First, we only had the energy to get it standing. SECOND, we wanted to see if our cats can NOT climb the damed thing. So we left it up undecorated for a dew days. Sadly, we would soon realize that our scheduels do not allow for tree decorating. Not both of us at the same time, and certainly not both of us at THREE different times. One to put up the tree, one to put on the lights and see if THAT attracts them, and another to put up the decorations. Monday night we put the lights on it and realized that new bigger living room means bigger better trees. Which means more lights than we're used to. Which means that Al went out on his day off last night to get some MORE lights, and now we have a LIT tree, sans decorations. Everyone is at catt battle stations. Both of them seem largely non plussed by what should be the biggest cat toy they've ever seen, by all rights. We suspect they're biding they're time, lulling us into a false sense of security, waiting for juuuuuust the right moment to attack. Like when we're busy opening gifts, and expecting them to play with the discarded paper.

Else I'm giving too much credit to the animals that still think there's a monster in the dryer.

Slowly but surely...