What a Tree-asco

Two days ago, Curtis was gonna put up the Christmas lights outside. "Gonna" being the operative word here. I realize it's not even Thanksgiving yet, but you see, we live in the weather-crazy midwest. It snowed on October 10th of this year. So you never know when we're going to get slammed with a big slick snowstorm and then boom - no Christmas lights on the house.

(Plus, like, most of our neighbors have already done theirs and we didn't want to look like the slackers.)

The day was sunny and even on the verge of warm. But as much as I nagged  bitched  helpfully reminded him that he'd said he was going to do it, and that the weather was perfect, he procrastinated. I can't say I really blame him, since he's worked literally every day this month, but still. The damn lights aren't going to hang themselves. So he promised - SWORE - he'd do it the next day.

The next day (yesterday) rolled around, and Curtis woke up ready to do the lights. But there was one problem.

It was raining.

After a spirited round of "I-told-you-so," I decided we decided to do the next-best thing: put up the decorations in the house. After all, we're going out of town for Thanksgiving; wouldn't it be nice to have everything all pretty when we get back?

Yes. Yes it would.

We have an artificial tree, and it's a pain in the ass to assemble. So last year, geniuses that we are, we decided to just take the decorations off, leave it together, and store the whole thing in the storage room in our garage. That way we could just bring it into the house ready-to-decorate this year. Oh, the foresight!

Except Curtis brought up a good point. "Think I should rinse it off?" he said. "It's been sitting in storage for a whole year, and there might be mice or spiders or something hiding in the branches."

Mice or spiders? Horrors!

So he hosed off the tree, just in case.

*Normal* people would have let it drip-dry for a day or two. But us? Nobody ever said we were normal. And I was excited, dammit. So we figured it was okay to bring it into the house as long as Curtis shook it off really well first.

... Which is how we ended up doing this:

While Curtis stood there with the hair dryer and complained dried the tree, I got into the box of ornaments and lights to get everything ready. And in doing so, noticed a extra piece of ribbon. It wasn't long enough to go around the tree, but it was long enough to do something with. First I tried twining it around the bannister, but it was too short. So, with Curtis making fun of me the entire time because I just had to use this little piddly piece of ribbon, I hung it in our front window like so:

See? I'll give you a moment to marvel at my mad decorating skillz.

..........

Ahem.

Anyway, when the tree had stopped dripping all over the carpet, it was time to put on the decorations. We started with a beaded garland - just lovely. Then we went to put on the lights. Except ...

I swear Christmas lights need to come with a "we-only-last-one-year" disclaimer. Because our tree lights, that we purchased one year ago, had apparently failed to muster up the strength to last for a second year. So we had enough lights for, like, half the tree. What was worse - Curtis had to go to work, and I wasn't about to venture out in the pouring rain with three kids ages 4 and under to get replacement lights. We couldn't put on the rest of the decorations, of course, without putting the lights on first. So we ended up with this:

And that, folks, is how our tree looks right now.

To add insult to injury, we've got two kids who won't stay out of it no matter how many times I threaten  ask them to. And there's this:

It's hard to catch her agile little behind in a photo, but trust me when I tell you that's a calico head peeking out. Yep, Ava won't stay out of the tree either. I think Thurman (our other cat - and yes, he's named after Thurman Merman, the fat kid in Bad Santa) would climb it too if he weren't so ... hefty.

Anyway, that's the story of our ill-fated Christmas tree.

I'm thinking we ought to be Jewish this year ...