catastrophe

That is what I have caused in my house.

I decided to surprise my husband and take the damn Christmas tree down by myself. My real, needley, dried up, been-here-since-the-weekend-of-thanksgiving tree. I have never taken a tree down by myself.

Oh heavens.

First, I broke Elizabeth's Hallmark ballerina ornament. I couldn't find her box, so I laid her on the arm of the chair until I could locate it, and then promptly knocked her off. And when I say broke, I mean she has multiple fractures of her legs, hands, and arms. I think she is in approximately 9 pieces.

Other than that one, all the other ornaments made it safely to the Christmas box. Initially.

So then it was time to take off the 19 strands of lights that Marty put on the tree. The lights are always, always his job. He puts the tree in the stand and puts the lights on, and then the tree is mine. Therefore, I do not know the method he uses to adorn the tree with lights. I assumed (ass u me) that he strung them on the tree in a circular fashion, round and round the tree until he reached the top. The tree is in the corner, and is rather dry and pokey, so I did not really want to walk circles around the tree, getting jabbed repeatedly with sticks and needles in the cramped corner of the room. SO, I tried spinning the tree to take the lights off. Oddly, that did not work. I tried standing on the couch and taking them off from the top. That did not work either. I tried pulling them all down to the floor and then lifting the tree off of them. ummm... miraculously, that did not work. Every way that I tried to remove them, they became more and more tangled.

I finally got pissed and put on rubber gloves, grabbed the tree by the trunk and just yanked it through the living room and out of the house, lights and all. My thinking was that it would be much easier to get the lights off if I could move all the way around it outside.

hahahahahha.

The 8 foot tree moving through the house scared colby to pieces. It took me 10 minutes to get him calmed down.

In the process of moving it out, I knocked over the floor lamp, and knocked the box of ornaments off the couch. More broken ornaments. I also stubbed my toe and it bled. I am unsure what I stubbed it on, but it could be any multitude of toys that I did not pick up before starting this task.

The stand was full of water. Brown, stinky tree water. I spilled it. Everywhere. I think you might be supposed to take the tree out of the stand before moving it.

The worst of all is that I dropped approximately 47 million tree needles into the carpet.

I have never had carpet in the living room - I have always had hardwood floors which are SO easy to sweep. This year, a large, beautiful off-white rug was my tax-refund gift to myself.

Carpet is not easy to sweep.

No biggie, I have a rainbow vacuum. I haul the MF out, fill the tank with water, hook it up, plug it up and start vacuuming.

Ummm... it doesn't vacuum up tree needles. In fact, all it really does is break the long, dry needles in to really small, sharp, needle powders. I have clogged up the hose of the rainbow with a million needles and there are still 46 million in my carpet.

I even tried the higher power hose without a head on it.

Nope. Clogged that up too.

So now, the situation is:

1. 46 million tree needles in the carpet.

2. Two tree needle clogged rainbow hoses.

3. A tree in my yard full of lights that are horribly and completely knotted up from my pulling an yanking.

4. Brown water stinky stained carpet.

5. broken ornaments

6. Sappy hands

7. Sappy feet

8. Sappy children

9. Rash from needles

10. Bloody foot

11. Needle powder, everywhere.

12. Crying mama, who decided to give up and blog instead.

It is not really looking up for the New Year. And somehow, I don't think Marty is going to be impressed with my industriousness.