1st New Year Goal Accomplished

I am proud to say I accomplished my 1st goal for the new year. I know many of you set lofty goals like running marathons, but I set my goals very low so that I am more likely to obtain them. My goal this year was take down the Christmas tree. It took me five weeks of looking at it with disgust to finally get the physical strength, mental capacity and time allotted to do it. For 27 mornings now I have walked down the stairs looked at the bushy artificial limbs of that 10 foot green giant in my living room corner and grumbled, "Not today. I don't want to bother with you and your plastic needles, just reaching for me to take you down."

I found some comfort when I looked out my living room window and saw my neighbors still had theirs up too. But last week they got the will power to take theirs down. So I resorted to just keeping the lights turned off on the tree and trying to ignore the green giant in the corner. And hoping everyone would do the same.
See, this tree is truly a labor of love for me. The day after Thanksgiving every year since I was 15 I would spend literally the whole day putting this tree up. It is not one of those new fancy artificial trees that are pre-lit and up in 10 minutes or less. This tree is much more mentally and physically challenging than that. It is like a puzzle with color coded branches. This tree is 10 feet tall and since it is so large and my living room is not, I play the game of balancing the branches just right so not all the weight is in the front and not in the almost bare back, which is tucked in the corner of the room. After all, nothing spoils Christmas morning than a Christmas tree falling on your 3 year-old.

On a good year it takes me about 4 hours to put up and another hour to decorate. I am pretty particular in how I light the tree. Apparently one year I wrapped my aunt's tree so tight with strands of lights that she has never invited me back to help or see her tree. Sorry Aunt Mitzi, but that is the way I think it should be done. A lot of white lights wound tightly around each branch so as not to see the cords, but only the glimmering illuminating lights.

A labor of love, no it's more than that. I nearly died one year putting it up. While standing on a metal ladder putting up the last stands of lights I was electrocuted. All I remembered was a zap, lights flashing off and my plastic slipper bottoms being cracked and fried. Now can you see the possibility for brain damage, thus explaining my insanity over this tree.

Although there are purist out there (Jeremy Eagar) that insist upon a real pine Christmas tree, I contest this tree is just as beautiful and worth the time, scratches, energy and electricity to put it up and take it down each year. It truly is an accomplishment for me to do it year after year.

I would like to thank my dear husband for duct taping the beat-up old box the tree goes into and Mally for helping dad carry the bundles of tree branches so that he could throw them in that beat-up old box. Oh, and I would like to thank my mother, for without her the tree would not be ours to labor over year after year. See, when I got married she gave it to me and bought herself a new fancy pre-lit-put-it-up-in-10-minutes-tree. What a sell out!