Wednesday, January 9, 2019
Sucks To Be You
So you decide it's time to take down the Christmas decorations and tree, since Epiphany was actually three days ago. You do not enjoy taking down the Christmas tree, so you get a Chris LeDoux album going on YouTube to make it less painful, haul out the boxes and bags to store the ornaments and lights, and . . . the baby wakes up from a too-short nap.
You decide you're going to put away the Christmas stuff anyway, dammit. You start quickly taking down ornaments and decorations, throwing some of the unbreakable things in the baby's direction to keep her distracted while you put away the breakable things.
This does not work. The baby cries because you will not let her chew on the lights you are untangling from the tree, causing a veritable hailstorm of dry needles to come down, even though there is plenty of water still in the tree bucket. As you discover when you try to lift it.
The baby stops crying when she realizes she can climb on to the small bench the tree was on. She starts crying again when she falls off of it.
You pause for baby comforting, but then grimly soldier on after she calms down. This time, you put her on the big hide-covered bench with a magazine to rip up while you vacuum up the tree needles as fast as you can.
This is when you discover that pinyon needles are so long and stiff that they will clog your vacuum. So you open up every part of the vacuum that will open and dump out the needles into the children's tambourine, as that is the only receptacle to hand.
The baby wants the tambourine full of dirt and needles. She is unhappy when you deny her this treasure.
You then discover that the last remaining part of the vacuum that is clogged up will require a flat-head screwdriver to address. This means a sprint to the shop for the tool and getting back before the baby realizes you aren't in the same room.
Finally, the needles are disposed of and the vacuum is in working order again. You clean up the pieces of ripped-up magazine from the bench, put away the vacuum, and make a mental note to just use the broom or something next year to clean up the tree needles.
(Go ahead and change all instances of "you" to "I," and there you have my morning.)
Actually, you could have left the tree up since the Church is still in the "Christmas Season" and won't take everything down until this coming Sunday. Sure you wanted to hear that! However, I'm sure the church ladies (not being sexist here, it's just a fact) don't have to worry about a crying baby when they're tasked with christmas clean up/put away. Neither am I for that matter, which is a very, very good thing. Your day will come, although it's too far in the future for you to get any satisfaction thinking about it just yet. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI guess that explains why when I tried to call you to say “hi” you didn’t pick up ....
ReplyDelete:)
I also had four “littles” years ago. I put a large sheet under the tree and folded it up to fit under the tree skirt. Then when taking down the tree, we pulled the sheet up and around the tree to drag it out and the just wash the sheet. Worked beautifully for many years until we Went the fake tree route.
ReplyDeleteBabies and toddlers make tasks like this more difficult.
ReplyDeleteOh Lordy - I was right there with you. I think I'd have been about 100 degrees and uttering profanities if I were you in that situation. I love the fact you describe it so matter of fact - do you actually stay completely cool during all of this? I think my edition would have also included throwing parts of the hoover about. These things are certainly sent to test us. My shadow of a comparable tree incident was taking everything off, it all going well and then when we tried to squish it through the window (needles flying everywhere) I forgot to take it out of the stand full of water. Rushing rivulets of needle filled water all through the tiles - the grouting acting as effective tributaries to distribute the needles to all corners of the room. It is such fun isn't it.
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