We decorated our tree this morning, and it was a spectacle of chaos. Bill The Cat ended up in kitty jail because he wouldn’t stop chewing on the light strands. Woo ended up being relgated to a chair for a while because he was so excited he was bouncing off the walls. But it’s done, we all had fun, and we think it’s a lovely little tree.
| Click on a picture for the larger view |
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| The tree before we decorated, mid-inspection by Bill |
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| When five-year olds decorate. (That’s Woo on the floor and Bill in the chair checking out the train.) |
Martha would not approve of our tree. But I’ve always felt that Martha could kiss my fat white ass, so it’s not surprising that I don’t care. I’ve always preferred odd, personalized trees to themed ones. The themed ones are lovely, but they seem so designed. I’m not a designer kind of person. My sister-in-law asked me if it was ok if she gave Woo an ornament for Christmas, or would that screw up a theme? I laughed out loud and told her we don’t even have a “theme” to our furniture, much less our tree!
Our tree is far from perfect:
- One of our light strands is missing the green string because one of the wires came unsoldered and we can’t fix it. The other light strand is missing the red string for reasons unknown. We just said to hell with it and quit trying. One should only dedicate a finite amount of time to these things.
- We only have 16 ornaments on our tree, and all are plastic. Until Bill and Woo grow up some, we figured the glass ones were begging for disaster, so we went this way.
- The tiny angel on top is an ornament, not a tree topper. I have a very nice porcelain angel tree topper, but it’s breakable – see all-plastic ornaments above. It also seemed rather large, given the state of the rest of the tree, so we decided to give her the year off.
- There is not one single ornament above Woo’s reach, and most of the ornaments are hung in clusters. We let Woo decorate, and that’s where he put them. So that’s where they stay. We aren’t entering this tree into any contests, so why get all pedantic about it?
Bill is attacking the hell out of the ornaments and beaded garland on a regular basis. But at least he’s quit scaling the damned thing. All this past week we’ve been picking his orange ass out of that tree, but the upside is that he smells fresh as a Carolina pine forest.
Woo’s birthday is technically later this week, but for a myriad of reasons, we’ve decided to move his birthday to today. His present was a train to go around the bottom of the tree. It’s one of those $30 battery operated things from Wallymart, and it’s obnoxious as hell. It has “realistic locomotive sounds”, which you can’t even hear over the noise of the engine. You also can’t hear the TV, other people talking, or yourself thinking over the noise of that fucking thing. But Woo loves it, so we’re letting it go. He’s having the time of his life.
Which is really the point. He had fun, he loves his tree, no one (cat or human) can be hurt by the decorations, and everyone is happy. I’d call that the perfect tree.