Our goal for the Christmas tree is to have it stand up
straight, be beautiful and festive. Its goal is to fall over dead.
Our first tree fell down in the middle of the night. The
good news is it fell over on the night of Christmas Day, so we'd already had
the gift opening on Christmas morning. The bad news is that it fell onto a
hardwood floor. We lost many fragile, sentimentally valuable ornaments. The
scary news is that it keeled over in the middle of the night, breaking said
ornaments, and no one heard a thing. We woke up the next day to find it lying
on its side in the midst of brightly colored, shattered glass.
We thought that was an isolated happening. But the next tree
that fell over did so before Christmas Day. Luckily, we'd placed this tree on a
carpet so the ornament damage was minimal.
The third tree fell over Friday night, minutes after we
finished decorating it. We were all sitting there enjoying it. It really is a
beautiful tree. When, slowly and majestically, it fell to the ground. We had a
brand new tree stand. A big one. It stuck with the tree all right. And all the
water that had been in the stand spilled onto the carpet. Luckily, we keep a big plastic tarp under the
tree but it did spill onto the red felt tree skirt that I keep on top of the
plastic.
The first comment was from my husband. "At least we're
here to deal with it," he said. "That was good luck."
"Nothing says luck like the Christmas tree falling
over," said kid #2.
So dh pulled the tree up and I held it while hollering for someone to get towels to mop up the water before the red felt stained everything.
Kid #3 retreated to the corner to be upset. Kid #2
raced out of the room toward the stairs. DD #1, bless her, went for towels to
wipe up the mess. When #2 returned, I said, "Where did you go?"
"I had to post an update on Facebook," she
answered. What, it's not real until it's on Facebook?
Youngest dd had been taking pictures of the tree trimming
for her photography class. After the tree was upright again, one of the kids
said, "You should have taken a picture of the tree on the floor."
"That's all right," she responded. "I'll get
it next time."
Well,
we had a few broken lights and ornaments, but it wasn't too bad. We had a few
laughs.
So then dh wired it to the wall (which he'd said he
would do earlier and has done before).
It's still a beautiful tree. Merry Christmas to all.
Also in December, I released the third short story in my Love Charm series.
Love Charm for Carlotta: Carlotta doesn't believe in love charms. Especially not when the bad boy hockey
player from her past suddenly re-appears in her life. Has the love charm brought
him back to her? She doesn't intend to find out. But, in the small town island
atmosphere of Martha's Vineyard, it's hard to escape your past. Do people
change, or will she be courting heartbreak again if she succumbs once more to
her high school sweetheart?
