and then there was the tree...

Oh yes, my lovely Christmas tree...I even bragged about it. It is a handsome tree, best I've ever had. And then the lights went out. First 50, then a few days later, another 50. Dammit. I have two strings on there, 100 each and I am guessing that 50 each run on some sort of separate line within the string. So there I am with only half the tree lit up. And if any or all of you have decorated a tree, you know full well the lights go on first. Well damn, now I had to strip the lights off the bottom and replace them. So I go to town, in search of a clear light string. Um...there are none. The 5 rows of lights at Wal-mart have been reduced to a 1/4 section of a shelf. Great. Now I have to buy all new lights and strip the whole tree of lights...because you can't have clear on top and multi on the bottom...sacrilige! So that's what I did this morning. Strip the lights off...disentangle them from all the friggin ornaments and the wooden bead garland, nearly tipped the tree over and deflower that poor angel on the top.

I hadn't mentioned the angel...I bought the poor thing at a Boxing Day sale one Christmas when I was visiting my parents. She was discounted so much that I just had to rescue her. That was in 1992. Somewhere in the many moves since then, her halo broke and her lights gave out. So I have been taping her halo back together and taking the last few lights from the tree and stuffing them up inside of poor angel. This year, the tree top was broken on my tree, perhaps in transit, so I had to create a new one for poor angel to prop herself on. And getting those darn lights to stay inside along with stuffing her on the pseudo top was no easy feat. And today I had to deflower her again. I damn near fell into the tree...it nearly had it, and I probably would have given up and chucked it out the front door at that point.

And let me tell you, that would not be a first either. I kid you not. The first year poor angel spent on the top of my tree, Christmas of 1992, a good friend throught it would be funny to take her down and strap her to his head, and plug her in. I have pictures. Ha ha, I laughed, now put that poor girl back where she belongs....and then the ex-husband were arsing around in front of the tree, and ex-husband decided it would be funny to throw good friend INTO the Christmas tree. It was my first REAL tree too. I had taken a great deal of criticism for it as well. I was living in outport Newfoundland and if any of you have been to the rock, you know there are not really any trees to speak of there, particularly on the southwest coast. So I didn't have the perfect tree. That didn't mean they had to DESTROY it. It was at a party on the 28th and I entered the living room just as dear friend was crawling out of the tree. I attempted to realign the ornaments, but to no avail. So I got real pissy and spent the rest of the party (1am) ripping the ornaments off the tree and throwing them in the box, and heaved the tree out the patio door and off the deck to the ground below, a good 10 feet. And that's where it stayed for the rest of the winter. Lets just say the party wrapped up quickly after that. With the exception of another friend, Brian who kept asking me if I was okay, and after 13 times, I informed him he would be joining said tree if he didn't shut the hell up. And then I threw him out the front door. Merry F-ing Christmas.

And then there was the time Christmas just didn't work out for me in 2002 and I came home, same date of the year and ripped all the ornaments off and biffed the tree out the front door onto the step where it stayed until spring cleanup.

It must be something about years that end in 2...

In any event, the tree looks wonderful, I had to remove the wooden bead garland to put the lights back on, but then rearranged them and the end result is quite handsome again.

Phew. Now I have to remove all the presents from under it and vacuum up the piles of needles that fell during above reconstruction...