Treed

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Regular friends of the decanter will know that Ol’ Robbo is, for lack of a better word, something of a crank when it comes to putting up Christmas decorations, preferring to delay as long as possible. Ideally, I’d wait until Christmas Eve itself before decorating the tree and switching out purple bows and candles for red ones as we did when I was a kid. Mrs. R sees things differently, so of course I’ve had to compromise some in this matter, but I still try to stall as long as I can.

We bought our tree this year this past Saturday. This I didn’t mind so much, and indeed it’s a real necessity. Around here, if you don’t get in your tree at least two weeks early, you can easily find yourself not getting one at all. I noticed even the lot at my church was totally cleaned out by Sunday. (And my were they pricey this year, too!)

There, I thought, the matter would rest for a while. You see, in recent years Middle Gel has taken over primary decorating duty (the other two have never been much interested) and she doesn’t get home from school until this coming Friday. I’d have been perfectly content to set the tree up in its stand and let it sit for the week.

However, there’s a catch this year. Although the Gel gets home Friday, she’s immediately turning around and heading out on Saturday to prepare to perform in a Lessons and Carols service at her former choir director’s local church down in the Tidewater. So she wouldn’t be available for decorating until the following Monday. This would have been perfectly fine with me, but by some process of reasoning, Mrs. R decided it would be Too Late.

So imagine my surprise, once I got the tree in its stand on Saturday, when Mrs. R said, “Good, now please put on the lights and bring up the rest of the decorations so that I can add them.”

Biffed again.

We have a new feature this year, too. Mrs. R got her hooks on the large, West German-made electric train set which used to circle the trees of her yoot. I’ve no problem with this at all, at all, nostalgia being in general a Good Thing, except that I’ve already disclaimed any responsibility whatever if one of the cats manages to zap herself on the tracks.

(At least I also convinced Mrs. R this year that as long as the tree’s already up she can go ahead and put the presents under it so that I no longer have to trip over them in the closet. “I think the whole ‘Santa’ story is pretty much blown by now,” I said. She giggled.)