Oh, Christmas Tree . . .!

Despite what The Boy might say, we didn’t actually steal the Christmas tree.

Last weekend, Saturday December 15th to be exact, Jason and I went to two different Christmas tree lots in an ultimately failed attempt to obtain a Festive Holiday Tree. It’s not that they didn’t have trees I wanted, or that the trees were too pricey, it’s that there were no trees. None. Zero. Negatory on the trees.

At that point, I should have continued slaloming around the greater NoCo area and obtained a freaking tree. However, it was snowing and I wanted to get home and commence the Christmas Cookiepalooza I had planned.

This is me, though, and nothing can ever be simple. I didn’t go out on Sunday to get a tree. And Monday I had to work late, and The Boy was Christmas shopping and I wanted to go with him. Tuesday I didn’t feel good, and didn’t want to go out in the cold. This brings us to Wednesday, December 19th.

Now, I get that the 19th is, as The Liquor Fairy insists, a wee bit late in the season to go out shopping for Festive Holiday Trees. However, I assert that that’s just fucking stupid. People regularly used to put their trees up on Christmas Eve, and if capitalism was working as it should, there would be sufficient trees to meet the demand right up until Christmas. This is yet another failure I will lay at the feet of 7 years of a semi-literate Republican president and our ineffectual Congress, but I digress.

The first lot I went to did have trees, but they were a bit too mangy even for my taste. I understand that, when shopping less than a week before Christmas, some arboreal aesthetic compromises might have to be made. I do not hate on the little ugly trees, I just don’t care to put one up in my home. Plus, I don’t do long needles, which rules out at least half of the trees on any given lot from the word go.

We went then to the second lot, where in 2005 I got my tree like, three days before the damn holiday. Whatever. No trees. Not one.

By this point, I was threatening to start banging my upper body and head repeatedly back against my car seat like an emotionally disturbed child, a threat singularly terrifying to The Boy because he knows that I’m likely to actually do it. However, continuing up the road, we come to the Florissant Jaycee’s Tree Lot. As we get close I can see from the tree that they have veritable shit ton of trees, so I get to feeling pretty sassy.

Then we pull up and there is no one there. Empty trailer. Wet trees lit only by the sickly glow of the sign of the nearby Kmart. The hours on the trailer said that they should be open, but they weren’t.

I suggest we get out and look around. The Boy, anxious not to see his girlfriend have yet another meltdown, agrees, thinking that perhaps we can find a tree and return for it later.

“Fuck this,” I say. “If we find something, I’ll slide a check through the window.”

Nervous laughter.

“You think I’m kidding?”

“No. No, I really don’t.”

Which is why I love the man.

They did have a tree, full with short needles. It smelled of pine, and did not rain a shower of needles when shaken. It was, in short, good e-fucking-nough. “Let me get my checkbook,” I said, turning back to the car.

The Boy proceeds to follow with the tree. “No! We have to put it through the thingie!” I said, pointing the Tree Binding Plastic Netting.

The best part of this story, I think, is not the “buying” of a tree from an unattended dark tree lot, but the fact that we couldn’t get the tree through the damn tree netting thing.

First, he tries to shove it in wrong end first, which I think explains a lot about our sex life. Then, he refuses to apply sufficient force for the job at hand. Then we manage to stuff it through--directly through—leaving the tree unencumbered by netting, which is kind of the point.

I am almost no help because I am laughing hysterically the entire time. Finally, we get the tree bound up, and then we hacked through the plastic net with my keys since neither of us had anything better. Finally, I stuck the check through the mail slot, along with a note written on the tree’s tag telling what I had done and advising the Jaycees contact me at the number on the check in case there was some kind of issue.

I figure I won’t hear from them. They were probably at the bar.

Tuesday Redux

Tonight was a quiet evening. I got out of work in a pretty good mood, mostly because I'm off tomorrow and don't think there is much my co-workers can do to fuck up too badly while I'm gone. After admonishing them to try not to do anything irritating in my absence, I left for home.

In the car, I heard a Christmas song about a dude standing in line behind a kid buying shoes for his dying mother. The kid wanted his mother could look nice if she met Jesus on Christmas eve. A Christmas song about shoes, dead moms, and standing in line. Fun. Wish I wrote that.

I came home to meet The Boy. We were going to go get a Christmas tree, but it is rainy and crappy outside, so instead we went out to forage for food. I embraced the shame and we went for buffalo shrimp, which in the Lou is a fraught experience involving a trip to Hooters that I don't want to talk about but have to admit before The Boy snitches my ass out. There were buffalo shrimp, and the place was almost devoid of other customers, which was pretty much all I had hoped for.

On the way home, the car began making a new and distinct noise. My car health philosophy is exactly the same as my personal health philosophy--wait to see if it gets better. It didn't get better; it actually got worse. The Boy and I decided that it sounded like dragging. The good news is it's not a bum. The bad news is that it will require actual repair requiring something other than zip ties. I'm hoping a half-assed tack weld will do the trick. I'm willing to let the guy at Meineke look at my boobs or something if that will help. I'm not proud.

Speaking of not proud, after we retired to the house, we shared some valuable time vegging out in front of our laptops, where I found this, and had a big snotting, sobbing cry.

Yeah. D'you have a pet growing up? Yeah? Grab a tissue. Grab the BOX.

Merry Christmas

Well, my effort to be all cute and hostess-y was thwarted by the cocksmacks at eVite and their stupid limit to the size of photos that they will let you upload. The bastards. I'm sure that I could cut down the size of the photos I'd taken, but wrestling the beasties has left me exhausted and unwilling to fight with my computer.





I think Jack looks mighty damn cute, even if the look on his face suggests a gulag survivor.




Peanut butter. The ultimate dog training tool. If it will make The Beast hold still while wrapped in Christmas lights, I'm not sure what it can't do.





Bella looks so fucking cute in her Santa Suit that I wallowed on the floor after bursting a blood vessel in my brain.