Christmas Tree Hell...

This Tree is the scourge of my existence. Usually Diane and I go full on real live tree. Problem is Diane is allergic, and every year shortly after Christmas, she gets sick. Unfortunately this year, she is just getting over chicken pox, and well, she can’t afford to get sick again, so we decided to get a fake tree.

I felt good with this decision. I figured it would be easy. Since Diane was sick, we were getting a late start on our holiday shopping, I figured this would make our lives super easy. We would go to Lowes, or Home Depot and we buy the tree. I assumed there was like one fake tree and everyone got it. Oh how wrong I was…

Friday night, Diane and I go to Lowes, and figure this is a slam dunk; we’ll get a tree and jet out for a fun evening. We look at the fake trees, and they were awful. First, there were three of them. Each one more sickly, and awful looking. I swear they didn’t even try to make these trees look real. Maybe the Charlie Brown tree look is in. This trip resulted in my chaperoning a drunk Diane as we wandered through Pottery Barn …

Saturday. We try again, with high energy and motivation we head out to a local retailer specializing in fake trees. To my astonishment the trees were picked over... What happened to the tree? You know the one everyone gets?

There were pre-decorated trees, trees with lights, 10ft tall trees, trees with snow. WTF- I just want a basic tree. Then disaster strikes. Dissention in the ranks as frustration and fatigue start to set in.

Diane looks at me with one of those looks that only a wife can give a husband and barks: “you know this is all your fault. If you would let us start Christmas just before I got sick, we would have a tree already.”
I was stunned. My soul mate, my confidant, my partner in crime had just kicked me in the nuts. Thrown me in front of a bus. I didn’t know what to say. I say what everyone who is caught verbally with their pant down says, “F- you” I buy some time, and continue “ first of all Christmas has no right invading November, it’s just not right, and furthermore, this is your fault for getting chicken pox, if we had been here last week, we’d have a tree”

Now I realize the irrational nature of our exchange, but it was really a stressful situation. We were both exhausted and frankly, we just wanted a god damn tree. Then like a shining beacon of light off in the corner, we see tree that will fit our needs exactly.

It’s big, it has no lights, no snow, and it looks real. We want it. But then, we hear this guy on his cell phone, cell phone guy talking to his wife about that tree. Diane and I look at each other with a sense if urgency. Cell phone dude is gonna steal our tree! We rush off to find a salesman.

I run to the first salesman trying to get our name on this tree first. But then my conscience kicks in, I ask, “how many of these do you have?” Saleman replies “four” I feel relieved that we aren’t in fact swiping cell phone guy’s tree. I exclaim with joy “we’ll take it!”
Salesman walks to the back, and Diane asks me “what would you have done if that was the only one? Given it to cell phone man? That’s our tree!” I just smiled, thinking I had dodged a bullet.

Just then, Salesman rains on my parade, “sir, that’s it, the last one do you want it?”

What a dilemma. Risk ruining cell phone guy’s day, or face the wrath of my wife? Well, really no dilemma, looked salesman in the eye, and stated. “we’ll take it!!!” Luckily for my Karma I overheard cell phone guy’s wife saying she wanted a tree with built in lights.
He walked briskly out of the store with only the thoughts of Christmases that could have been with my tree. Whew! that was close.

Just as an epilogue to this story was the fact that we had Diane’s car (a mini) and could only get half of the tree in the car, and had to come back for the second half. If you think I was surly about this development. You would be right.