Behold The (Fake) Tree

I won't be blogging much about the holidays because I really, really loathe almost every part of the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's. I'll spare you the details, suffice to say, I am the ultimate scrooge. I think I get it from my dad.

I do manage to grace our home with a lovely Christmas tree every year. We are not of the "hunt and kill" Christmas tree tradition. Being a single mom with no adult male on the scene (um, at least consistently), I cannot fathom the idea of taking an ax to a would-be Christmas tree, loading the thing onto my car, making it home with the tree still strapped onto the car and then somehow negotiating it into the house and wedging its trunk into the tree base. The mere notion of that whole process makes me feel like dipping into Santa's little helper jar, otherwise known as the Xanax stash.

As a child, my parents took us kids to the tree farm and we had the fun-filled experience of finding the perfect tree and bringing it home to live with us for the holiday season. God bless my parents for doing that. As a parent now, I can sincerely appreciate their efforts in making the tree event truly special (and fairly peaceful, as I recall). They must have popped a lot of Xanax.

These days, the only thing that stands in the way of me and the tree is a big load of rat poop. The tree lives in the garage year round and makes a brief appearance during the four LOOOONNNNNGGGGGGG weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Come the day after Christmas, that baby is whisked off to live among the garage rats for another 48 weeks. As far as I'm concerned, the tree's purpose is to provide shelter for all the gifts and the moment the gifts are removed, well, the tree must be too.

This year, I must say, B's interest in decorating the tree was significantly improved. We ended up very "bottom heavy" on the ornaments but I did some re-decorating while he was in bed and all is proportionate now. Now if I can just get him to play along with the "Let's Move the Ornaments Around Game So Mommy Can Surf the Internet." Of course I mean, "So Mommy Can Get Her Paperwork Done."

In any event, the damn thing is up and the holidays are alive and well in our home. B's breaking into his advent calendar candy every morning at 6am and I'm looking longingly at the Xanax bottle. Oh, yes, Christmas has arrived.