I shouldn’t be surprised that there was another “blog worthy” incident this Christmas, and it is only the 19th. Late getting a Christmas tree in our little town in North Carolina, a good ole boy (well he had one foot in the grave, the other in a cast and apparently left his teeth by the sink) came out and sold us “any tree without a red tag” for $20. Well, none of the 5 tree’s left had a red tag so it was buyers choice. I mean who in the bible belt waits til the week of Christmas to get a tree…ummm we do.

The man’s grandson put the tree on the car, tied her down (apparently he wasn’t a boy scout), and I was afraid the whole way home the tree was going through the windshield of any car behind us. Since it was so loose, mom and I contemplated accelerating into the drive way, hitting the breaks and hopefully landing the tree at the front door. Considering our luck, we decided against it. Looking at our “Charlie Brown tree” and the tree stand, that is more for a Rockefeller center tree, we weren’t quite sure how it was going to work, but with all four screws fully screwed into the base, it looked pretty good. Lassoing the tree with the lights, I think we will be better off buying new ones next year than trying to unravel the mess made trying to get a light in each void on the tree. I was stretching lights from the top to fill in parts of the tree I wasn’t even sure were there!

At last, the lights were up, and we began putting on ornaments…one by one with all the Christmas cheer available.

About the time we put on the last ornament, the jolly “it doesn’t look so bad tree” turned into the “oh crap” Christmas tree. Sitting on the floor, I looked up just in time to watch the tree falling towards me, ornaments falling off and landing all around. The tree was down. We were laughing (and still are). Pushing the tree up right, I began looking around. The tree trunk was just too small to be anchored down, and the weight of the ornaments caused the trunk to slip back and the tree forward–on my head. My solution went through a couple of stages. First I wanted to duck tape it to the wall, but the walls are wood and tape doesn’t stick too well and there is a window to deal with. I opted to shoving a tennis ball in one quadrant, a styrofoam square in two quadrants and a vacuum attachment in the fourth. Not being too confidant in that solution, I wrapped one of the loops of lights on the tree around the window latch, actually double looped…then got the bright idea to use the blind pull to wrap around the trunk of the tree and tie that puppy off. So far so good, but if in the morning the valance is out of the window, the ornaments are scattered around the room and the lights have torn a part no one will be surprised.

I think we will just put some Kahlua in the coffee and call it a Christmas puddle.