Trials and Treebulations

I'm so helpful! In exchange for Claire driving me around all night, getting me pizza, entertaining me for the evening and letting me watch cool cable shows at her house, I agreed to watch her buy a Christmas tree. It was sooooooo hard. First, she drove me to the tree lot and then I watched two men strap a tree to the roof of her car, and I was EXHAUSTED. When we got back to her house and she was all "Okay, let's get this thing inside," I was all "Whoa, lady. I'm not a robot."

FINE. I'll help. We pulled up to her house, and the job didn't look too bad.

[There is supposed to be a picture of the tree wrapped up on the roof of Claire's small sedan-sized car here, but my computer blows and refused to load the image. Rest assured, the tree looked small and not sharp and harmless.]

See? Not too bad. Two smart ladies can get this thing inside and upright in no time. But here's the thing...for as brilliant as Claire is, she sees no point doing some things properly. She prefers to do them quickly. So when the two of us were lugging the surprisingly enormous tree up the extra-icy walkway and I suggested "Let's take the trunk in first so we don't end up pulling all the bottom branches off trying to get through the doorway," she scoffed. And then she just yanked the tree the wrong way into her house.

[OMG. Now Blogger is not uploading ANY pictures. Blogger? YOU. ARE. THE WORST. Okay, so here's where you'd see a picture of the bottom of a tree with super mangled and splayed bottom branches that were shoved the wrong way through a door frame.]

Beautiful. If Mother Nature had to forcibly shove a tree the wrong way through a door frame, this is totes how she'd do it. So, after we cleaned up 304 pounds of pine needles that were mercilessly ripped from the tree during the process of being pulled through a door, we had to get it into the stand. Trees are heavy and tippy, so we decided to lay the tree on its side and put the tree stand on sideways, then tip it upright like magic. It would have been relatively easy had the boy scout "troop leader" in charge at the tree farm known how to use a freakin' saw. He didn't. He "trimmed" the base of the tree as only a non-boy-scout man could have: completely slanty.

[EFF YOU, BLOGGER. Here's where you WOULD see a picture of a tree stump cut at basically a 90 degree angle making it nearly impossible to get all parts of the trunk in water. IDIOT.]

Once we realized that the trunk was ridiculously uneven and giant, we decided, "Eff it. We'll just put it in the stand and hope for the best." Except we are two tiny women and Claire's tree stand consists of four extremely complicated nut-bolt-basicphysics prongs that need to be hinged, twisted and properly placed. At the same time. It's not like a normal tree stand. It has four of these wingnuts and four of these crazy bar things that you're supposed to measure and line up and Claire and I just lost interest immediately. We figured it would be far easier to leave one of these "crucial" pieces out.

[Here's the picture of the leftover pieces of the tree stand. I HATE YOU, BLOGGER.]

But, with sap on my fingers and Claire's brute determination, we FINALLY got the tree up, straight and "stable."

[Picture of amazing tree.]

Isn't it amazing?! Yes. Two little women put that beast together. Sure, we tried to get Geo and Claire's neighbor Bryan to help, but they couldn't be bothered. So, we pulled through and erected this beauteous tree. It's a little crooked and Claire believes it's "not sturdy enough," but whatever. When I left that place, the tree was up, straightish, and not my problem anymore. Merry Christmas!