I LOVE Christmas. Anyone who knows me, my mother or my grandmother knows that any woman with Grandma Shirley genes LOVES Christmas. I love everything about it.
Sunday, however, I hated Christmas for just a few minutes. (Don't panic - I got over it, I swear.)
Matt and I had finally gotten a beautiful (yet WAY too expensive) tree. It was in it's complicated stand, all set up and ready to be lighted. (yeah I know it's "lit" but it's my blog and I reserve the right to make up rules for writing to sound cooler.) I had ten strands of lights, ready to go. The beautiful, small twinkly white lights.
I forgot that I am an anal Christmas decorator. Ten strands of lights covered about . . . the bottom three feet of my tree. Seriously.
So off to Wal-Mart I went to get more lights. (I KNOW, I KNOW I was breaking the Shabot. Trust me it comes back to bite me in my sorry tuckus in about a paragraph.) I bought five more strands of lights. (I was on the phone with Sheila at the time (aka not focused) which becomes important in about two seconds.) I got home, strung the five more strands and "oh crap (kick couch here) i'm out of lights again and have to go BACK to the store." Teaches me to talk on the phone while I should be focusing on Christmas.
Back to Wal-Mart. Five more strands of lights.
Walk in the door, ready to attack the final three feet of the tree. And then . . . I saw it . . .
OH. MY. GOSH. ALL. THE. LIGHTS. ARE. OUT. allofthem. Every single last light on the tree is TURNED OFF.
Teaches me to break the Sabbath.
I panic. And start cussing. And kicking things. My tree is about ten feet tall people. And at this point it has about 15 strands of lights tied in knots on every single branch and every single bough. Except of course the top three feet.
"Breathe." I tell myself. It must start at the bottom because there's no way ALL the strands kicked the bucket right??
Then I realize I have NO IDEA where the first strand ends and the second one begins.
NO FREAKING GOSH DARN HOLLY JOLLY CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO IDEA.
Breathe, Kate. Breathe. In . . .out. In . . . out . . . screaming "MMMMAAAAATTTTT COOOMMEEE HEEELLLLLLPPP MMEEEE I THINK I'M GOING TO CHOP THE TREE DOWN IN THE HOUSE"
Naturally he comes to help but I'm in too much of a panic to LET him help so I just send him off with a (non used) half burned out strand of lights to try to figure out what's wrong with it. That way I feel like he's making an effort, but he's not in my way, see?!?!?
So, I find a point about three feet up the tree where one strand ends, and plug that into the wall. PHEW. Now at least the tree is lit from the 3' mark to about the 6' mark. Progress. This is good.
So I start untangling. Now is where I should tell you how awesome I am at putting lights on a tree. It looks AMAZING and twinkly and all kinds of starry starry night lit up. But see, I accomplish this by pretty much wrapping lights from the back of a branch to the front, twisting and turning over every possible inch of the tree. Then re-wrapping back to the trunk and starting on the next branch. Round and round I go like this to the top of the tree (see why I needed twenty strands of lights?)
So what, you ask, does this mean to the story?
You try taking that mess off.
An hour later I had finally removed about seven strands of lights and discovered the bastards that caused the problem. THE BOTTOM TWO STRANDS HAD TOTALLY DIED. Bastards. They are the Grinches of Christmas lights I tell you. They tried to ruin trimming the tree day for me. And they almost did. But, despite my frustration, cussing and kicking, I had juuuuust enough patience to re-attach five strings of lights to the bottom and complete the tree.
What I did NOT have, my friends, was the patience to add ornaments at that point. No siree.
I stuck the angel on the top (with Matt holding on to the seat of my pants as I struggled to reach the top from my chair perch) and called it a night.
Yesterday I did have it in me to add the ornaments. So, my faithful readers (all four of you), as a reward for sitting through my ridiculous story, I give you pictures of our 2nd Annual Christmas Tree of Wonder. (Or you may call it Kateastrophe #7,459,762 . . . but who's really counting?)
Ta Daaa!
5 comments:
Your tree is beautimous Kate! I'll just keep coming back to stare at the most perfectly lit tree ever and try to ignore my dismal mess. Great Job!
I think it looks fab! Don't get mad...my tree took three strands of lights and took me 8 minutes. But see, the lights I used are like the size of actual lightbulbs, so in the corner of my Family Room stands a 12,000 jigawatt tree. It looks like noon down there! Don't worry, I'll be emailing you a picture. It may just look like a spaceship that has gone into hyperspeed, but a picture nonetheless.
Job well done! I truly looks gorgeous. My only question for you, my Mormon friend. What's a Shabot and is it contagious?
LOL! Like you blame ME for your return trip to Wal Mart! Sheesh!
It looks wonderful!
I didn't blame YOU B! I blamed myself for calling you and getting distracted!!
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