Christmas trees

God damn my arms hurt. Just got back from helping my female parental unit ( I'd call her 'mother' or 'mom' if she had any sense of maternal instinct that wasn't simply her alleviating guilt about not having aforementioned instinct ) pick up a christmas tree.

By pick up, I mean getting picked up, driving to her house, and then walking four blocks to some people who had trees for sale ( $25 dollars each for Douglas and Noble firs, compared to the $40 Home Depot is charging ), picking up a tree, and then walking the four blocks back to cut the bottom off of it ( take a half inch off to be certain the tree can actually draw water with capillary action ), twisting the stand on to it, and picking it up and carrying it up a flight of stairs into her house, and then up another flight of stairs to her living room.

She had a fake tree for a few years when I was a kid. Simply because it was cheaper then a real tree if you kept it for at least three years, and it didn't look that bad. At least for the first few years. The last time I saw it was four or five years ago and it looked pretty awful. ( Not sure how many years she had it, most of my holiday memories are of getting a book I had wanted, and then wandering off and reading the book and doing my best to ignore my family. ) It was a fake tree in that it had a metal pole in the center you wrapped 'tree-tinsel' around ( a garland colored colored like pine needles and with a flexible metal core ) to hide the straight pole and then you put the metal branches with fake plastic needles on by inserting them into the brackets on the center 'trunk'.

This was still better then the 'fake tree' my father had after my parents seperated back when I was a wee little tyke. He was utterly incapable of caring for any living thing that wasn't going to cook him dinner or potentially give him a bit of oral sex. Harsh words, but his own admission when drunk off his arse once. So knowing that, for a christmas tree he provided... Wait for it... A piece of brown cardboard, that he had outlined a tree shape on with green marking pen, done a half-arsed job of coloring in the outline, and then poked holes in it to put christmas lights through. I think I was seven at the time he unvieled this masterpiece of craftsmanship, and I am guessing it probably took him about that many minutes to concieve of and build the thing as well.

And that was my daily dose of holiday cheer. Someone pass me the eggnog and rum.