November 30, 2017 by Amy
The End. The Beginning.
So here I am, on the last day of November, having hit my goal of blogging every single day this month, assuming I finish this piece and post it. I fully recognize that my Christmas tree saga has taken over the blog this week, and I’d just like to say, “Welcome to my world.” It has taken over my life this week. I’m happy to report that I have hit my goal of getting the tree to a state where it’s ready for ornaments. Between M and I, it took approximately 80 hours. Eighty hours we will never get back. Eighty hours that makes me wonder why people erect trees in their homes for one month out of the year anyway. It’s not logical, if you stop and think about it.
Either you buy a real tree, shelling out good money, and haul it home strapped to the top of your car. That can’t be good for the paint. Or if you have an SUV I suppose you can shove it in the back, then pick pine tar off everything else you put back there for the rest of the year. Once you get it home, you have to care for it by dumping water in its base every day, which isn’t easy given that the widest part is right above where the water goes and you risk getting poked at best and drizzled with sap at worst. That’s the tree’s revenge for chopping it down. To add insult to injury, the thing sheds all over your floor and the needles track everywhere. At the end of the month, you have to drag it outside on one specific day for the community trash service to haul off and mulch for the park. At least it gives back to the environment.
Conversely, you invest in a fake tree, which then you have to disassemble and store for eleven months out of the year. And most of these don’t fold up nice and tidy into a wee box. Ours gets unceremoniously stuffed into giant garbage bags, hauled downstairs, and thrown on top of the bins with the ornaments and other decorations. Once a year you haul it back up, assemble it, arrange it (scratching the hell out of your arms in the process), and endanger your life by climbing a ladder to drape lights on it. Unless you’re super lucky and you decide to strip the non-functioning pre-lit lights off first.
This is the most inefficient decoration I can think of, either way you go about it. Can you tell where I am with the Christmas tree this year? I wonder if I will ever be able to look at it without profound hatred. It’s not looking good, tree.
However, or on the other hand, I am thrilled to say that for the most part, I am able to look at this blog with a feeling of pride and accomplishment. I wrote every day, even when I didn’t want to. I don’t know that I will continue to write here every single day, but I feel like I’m at least back in the habit of posting regularly. I say that now, and then tomorrow I’ll be too busy (or lazy, more like) and will use the fact that the month of posting is over as an excuse and then the same thing will happen the next day and then before I know it in January I’ll say, “Oh, crap. I haven’t posted in a long time.” So if I haven’t posted in a long time, please feel free to message me and tell me to get off my ass. Sometimes a girl needs a good kick in the pants. It should be about the time I’m taking the damn tree down and then you’ll get a play-by-play reckoning of how that goes. Given the start of the season, it should be a real hoot.
Of course, now that the damn tree is finished, at least with its illuminatory decorations, I don’t know what I’ll write about. It’s pretty sad when you get pissed that a Christmas tree has dominated your life only to discover that there wasn’t much there for it to beat out for your attention. Well, that thought is going to fester for a while.
Here’s to a new month, that hopefully involves more writing and less disassembling, more fun and less arborial agony. Here’s to December. November, you know what you can go do with yourself.
Leave a Reply