Monday, December 9th, 2002 10:06 PM
tree decoratin'
today.. was the day.. that we decided to assemble the color coded pile of pine needled branches
that have been laying in our floor for a day or two. this is one of the most adventureous tasks we, as a family take on durring this time of year.. besides hanging lights outside which is a whole 'nother ball of fun..
first of all.. there had to be a way to assemble this massive heap of mumble jumbled tree parts. only problem was.. no one could agree which part(s) went on first. being the sensible family that
we surely are, we settled this the completely calm, completely rational way: we each grabbed a branch and started arguing..
after the branches were all put together, of course, the tree fell. this was due to the fact we had an artificial tree (that is on a pole about 2" in diameter) in a real tree (trunk of about 6" in diameter) holder. so.. dad had to fetch some wood out of the back yard to chunk down in the holder to make the tree stand. apparently we chunked too much wood to one side, causing the tree to lean. my very intelligent brother decided to make the bright move of removing a piece of wood from one side.. needless to say.. the tree feel on him.. tiiiimbuuuur.. yeah, anyhow.. after we rescued jr. from the tree monster that gobbled him up, dad shoved another piece in the stand and dared anyone to say it was crooked.. no one took him up on that dare..
after the tree was up, mom started what she calls "fluffing the tree".. our fake tree had to look unfake (like it didn't come out of a trash bag shoved into the back of our shed, although, it did). this is a method of pulling the branches apart from one another and spreading the pine needles to make it look "fuller". after she had fluffed it to her like'n, it was time for the lights..
first of all, there are three places the lights could be.. spare room, attic or shed. we looked in the
spare room first, the attic second.. so of course they were in the shed. my brother and i began untangling the strand of lights.. with mom yelling at us for being too rough and swearing we will bust all the bulbs. we got one untangled.. plugged it in.. and it worked. so we started untangling the second strand.. which was not one strand, but two seperate strands.. apparently the shed has a few mice..
mice claimed two strands.. so we had one strand of lights out of the three we usually have and one fussing brother who was just going to keal over dead if we didn't finish the tree tonight. so, you can pretty much imagine that one winney kid doesn't help the two parents who are already tired of christmas this year.. so i had a strand of lights that i usually put up in my room, that i generously donated to the 'save the christmas tree' fund. but we still needed another set of lights.. there was a strand of all red lights that we had bought a few years ago thinking they were multi
colored.. guess we didn't look at the picture on the front of the box.. i don't know.. but anyhow i had the bright idea of taking the lights off the other mice claimed strands and substituting them in the red strand.. this idea worked out great.. until we started hanging them and the strand went out. we checked the plug.. still plugged in.. so we took them off and started checking the bulbs to see if they were loose.. before we got the strand totally off.. we noticed a few bulbs lying under the tree.. aparently the strands take different size bulbs.. these were too small.. so we carefully stuck them back in the sockets and hung them again.. putting any that fall out back in the sockets..
so when you come to visit there are three rules: don't slam doors.. always tip toe
and never breath in the general direction of the tree..
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