November 27, 2017 by Amy
Me vs. Tree
The war began tonight. While Zoe practiced for her Christmas piano recital, I went mano a mano with a Christmas tree. In case you haven’t read my last post, I’ll get you up to speed: my giant pre-lit Christmas tree decided this year to be a half-lit Christmas tree. It was a lovely stripey pattern but I couldn’t sell M on being avant garde for the holidays. After farting around with the lights for too long yesterday, I made the decision to strip the tree of its lights. M left on a business trip this morning, so it’s up to me to denude our tree. I am the luckiest girl in the world.
Now that I think of it, mano a mano is technically not the correct term to use, because we both come to this fight armed to the teeth. I have wire snips and needle nose plyers, and the tree has about 97 billion spiny needles. It’s been quite the arborial battle already.
The tree is in three sections. I tackled the middle first, which is the largest. It is now done. I have lost feeling in my fingers and my arms are scratched to hell because I couldn’t wear a long-sleeved shirt due to the swearing sweating.
I could start on one of the other sections tonight, but I am not a masochist. I’d call tonight’s battle a draw. While the middle section is indeed stripped of its pre-lit-but-won’t-light lights, I am too tired to gloat. And the tree has two more fresh rounds of troops to throw at me.
The battlefield – also known as my great room floor – is a mess of wires and lights, and I have a bowl full of the annoying green clips that ensured the lights consummated their marriages with each and every stupid branch. I’m collecting the clips so I can count them at the end as proof of this insanity. It’s like when fighter pilots mark their kills on the side of the fuselage, only with less, you know, glory.
We both live to fight again tomorrow night, me and the tree. I think I’ll tackle the bottom section, which is sitting on the train board and which may or may not be easier than the center section that straddled both ottomans in front of the couch during the fight while I circled it, moving from the couch to an armchair I pulled up on the other side before rotating the section to get to the underbelly. We’ll see.
For now, I have to clean up the carnage from tonight’s battle. I need a trash bag and a vacuum. It’s a bloodless war, if you don’t count the scratches on my arms. Damn tree.
Leave a Reply