“Douglas,” our chipper wee friend of a Christmas tree, sits discarded in the backyard. Having completely missed the free tree chipping the second weekend in January, we have no idea what to do with it.
I only remembered the tree at all when the snow thawed last Friday.
“Oh yeah,” I remarked to BoyRoommatefriend, “The tree.”
It looks so pathetic hunkered there in the corner of the yard, tilted sideways against the grass like a tourist who fell asleep on the beach.
Doesn’t this tug your heartstrings?
The suggestion was made to cut it up into tiny pieces and squeeze it into the compost, but somehow the sheer brutality of such a feat made me wince.
This is the first time I’ve ever had my own Christmas tree to deal with. In years past, it was either the tree at my parents’ house, or we simply never had a tree.
Do we just leave it there in the corner of the yard until it decomposes into nothing, returning once more to the sodden earth from whence it came? How long till the needles fall from it, leaving bare skeletal remains? Will a forensic anthropologist, like television’s Bones, do a post-mortem, and point a wavering finger in my direction whilst snarling an hollow-but-accustatory: “You….” Will I forever be deemed incapable of harbouring any responsibility whatsoever?
Probably.
Maybe the tree will stick it out until next Christmas. That would save us a quick $23.
I divide my time between a variety of poverty-inducing ventures: writing for fun and writing for torture; watching far too many movies and reading far too few books.
I have lived previous incarnations as bookseller, bureaucrat, filmmaker, zinester, student, and wayward traveller. I studied Film at Langara after seven years at Simon Fraser entrenched in English, Archaeology and about every other Liberal Arts and social science topic you can imagine.
I am very good at Trivial Pursuit.
I am related to Dr. Samuel Johnson, writer of the first English dictionary, which explains my perfect spelling and penchant for black cats.
I once lived in a house in the South Hill neighbourhood of Vancouver with six people, four cats, one goldfish, and a vegetable garden for a front yard. We called it The Commune. It was where I lived with my husband before he was Husband, before he was Fiance, before he was Boyfriend, back when he was just Boy Roommate. Life was a sitcom and we were the “will they/won’t they.”
We did.
Once we ran away to England because we like having adventures. But we didn’t like it that much, so we came home again.
I have the personality of a superhero’s alter-ego. Only I don’t fight crime. At least not yet.
I am currently obsessing over romantic comedies and hosting murder mystery dinner parties (online these days, of course!).
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One thought on “Only eleven more months until Christmas is over again”
The first year my sister and I celebrated Christmas away from the parents, we got ourselves a Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree. Post-Christmas we took a hacksaw to it and bundled it up curbside for the organic waste people to spirit away. It was not glamorous.
The next year we got a fake tree. It was full and sturdy and oh so easy to pack away when Christmas was through. I used to scoff at people who didn’t have real trees, but the older (and lazier) I get, the more sense I see in their choice.
The first year my sister and I celebrated Christmas away from the parents, we got ourselves a Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree. Post-Christmas we took a hacksaw to it and bundled it up curbside for the organic waste people to spirit away. It was not glamorous.
The next year we got a fake tree. It was full and sturdy and oh so easy to pack away when Christmas was through. I used to scoff at people who didn’t have real trees, but the older (and lazier) I get, the more sense I see in their choice.
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