Tuesday, December 2, 2008

The Christmas Tree Adventure....

For whatever reason, my husband and I tend to have fairly regular unplanned adventures. Christmas trees tend to be a pretty consistent adventure for us. This year we only had a mild scare of the tree flying off the car into interstate traffic and impelling some unfortunate soul on their way home from Thanksgiving weekend. Don't worry, no one was injured - we held tight to our nylon clothesline that we had used to tie the tree to the car (way too slippery to hold a tight knot by the way).



But as for our very first Christmas tree adventure we will have to go back two years. (Yeah, yeah we lived in sin...blah blah blah - we're married now.) We lived in a townhouse that was built in the 1920's. It was a major pain (very small kitchen and bathroom) but had great character with hardwood floors and radiator heaters. In the end, we had to move because Michael kept getting sick and we think unfortunately it had mold, but I will always miss it.


Anyways, it was our first Christmas together and I really wanted to decorate the house all nice. I had decorated the table with Christmas plates, made a wreath, and wrapped fake holly around the banister of the stairs. For me, it is a requirement to get a real tree. I grew up with real trees and can't stand the thought of buying a fake one. So we went to the local Christmas tree stand and tied one on top of the Cavalier to take home.



We arrived safely and set it up in the living room. Thankfully we decided not to decorate it that night because the very next day we got a notice saying that in our particular county it was illegal to have real trees in apartments. Normally, I would have suggested we just risk it and leave it be - it's only a month right? Well our landlords came in once a month to check the smoke detectors. Where was the one and only smoke detector in our house??? Can you find it in the picture below?


Yep...and they were scheduled to come in that week. Crap. We decided the only safe place to hide it would be in our bedroom - upstairs. So, Michael manhandles the tree and takes it upstairs by himself. Yes, I should be in aw of such a strong man who can drag an 8 foot Christmas tree up the stairs, but in the process he managed to pop off pretty much all of the holly berries I had so painstakingly wrapped around the banister as well as break a lamp and get pine needles absolutely everywhere! Ugghhh! So, of course I yelled - then I cried. On top of it all, the only place we could put the tree happened to be right by the radiator.

So, in the spirit of Christmas, we had to live without heat in the bedroom for an entire month in fear the tree might catch on fire if we turned on the radiator. We pretty much slept in sweatshirts, toboggans, gloves, and heavy socks until it was finally time to remove the tree.


Hopefully, this year our only adventure will be the one already had on the interstate.




2 comments :

  1. May I just say what a commitment to live without heat in winter for a tree!? Wow! Your tree looks really lovely and you did a wonderful job - and it was a huge tree wasn't it?

    I haven't gone to a tree shopping yet.. I think we better go soon before all the good ones are gone.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Illegal to have a tree in an apartment? That's so sad. And an example of what happens when you elect crazies.

    ReplyDelete

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