checkmate, tree.

Every year, the MOG and I battle it out over the appropriate display and duration of Christmas cheer.

He would very happily skip decorating altogether and sit down on Christmas morning with non-seasonal music playing, for a peaceful exchange of gift cards, after which we would independently text holiday greetings to our family members who live 12 hours away. In fact, Richy, I bet you're reading this and thinking how nice that would be. 

If I had the money and the manpower, I would cover our entire roof and every one of our trees in lights. It would look like the Galleria in my yard, and I would have a chuckling life-size Santa on my porch to greet passers-by. Inside, it would be more lights and Christmas music and an 8 foot tree in the living room with a couple of smaller trees, like 6 footers, in various locations around the house. We'd put the trees up the day after Thanksgiving and have presents wrapped and stockings stuffed by the first week of December, and Christmas music would start and play continuously as soon as temps dropped below 70. Couple of dancing Santa dolls. Eggnog fountain. You get the drill. I'd dress the kids up in sweaters with snowmen on them and we'd get our pictures taken. Cookies for the neighbors. And then I'd teach the kids Christmas carols and make them put on a show, which I'd video and put on the internet. And then we'd drive to Texas for a week of reveling and salsa. 

We're lucky we agree on the important stuff, like honesty and Apple products. But every year, it's a battle, because it's cold outside, and trees are expensive, and sticky and poky and needles everywhere and you have to put them in the tree stand and water them and so on. And I always wail and say MY DAD IS DEAD, GIVE ME A TREE, which is the way a mature woman communicates her felt needs. And then we get one and put it up and it's great and beautiful. It's just the process that he hates. I guess. Or happiness. 

This year, the MOG is a cripple of sorts, as his back has slipped, and he looks kind of like a candy cane man from the side, leaning to one side with his hip all jacked out of place. 34 and 33, y'all, and we're all like, kidney stones and back failure. Maybe we should go to a home.

Anyway, we have plotted for days the way to drug him and drag him around, so he can stand long enough to get a tree, and so we executed the plan, arriving at Lowes exactly as he reached the pinnacle of his pain. So maybe we're not the smoothest planners, shut up. Then, Lowes was out of tree netting. yougottabekeedingme. So we hobbled back to the van and drove over to Walmart, who no longer carry fresh trees, and the MOG was strongly considering biting down on his arsenic tablet, and all the kids were like, are we going to get a tree? times one million and R2 was starting to get worried because now we a) ate dinner b) went to Lowes and c) went to Walmart, and he still wasn't getting a tree, which was concerning him very, very much, and he indicated this by pointing as insistently as possible at every Christmas-related item in the store, which were LEGION.

In the end, even though my DAD IS DEAD, I surrendered and accepted a fake tree. And I like it. A lot. It is very, very tall, and I don't have to water it, and it looks great, and everyone is happy. So, there you go.

Now, to pick just the right gift card...