*** My Last Real Christmas Tree ***

The True Story of My Last Real Christmas Tree.

I had stopped at Home Depot because I didn't want to stop at one of the local farm-stands.
I wanted this to be very quick and easy

We had a snow storm a couple of days before, and the trees were all still wrapped in that netting,
very frozen and covered with snow.
It was dark, with a whipping Northeast wind and sub-freezing temps,
............ so I just picked one as I'm already starting to get Bah-Humbug.

Now if you put the tree on top of your car it might scratch it from the ice and snow that is attached to it,
or you might get sap on the roof, which is a PIA to get off, so I open the trunk, drop down the back seats,
throw it in and tie things down with some twine that I brought.
It was so cold, and my hands were so freezing that I even had trouble turning the key to open my trunk.
I actually had to put two hands together to do this

Now home, and my car trunk is a total mess from the snow and all the needles from the tree
(note to self at the time: vac it later in the spring when the temps finally get warm again)

In the house, .......... and now some of the tree needles are beginning to shed on our tiled kitchen floor.
I let it the tree thaw for an hour or so, then I removed the netting which still had snow and ice attached.
By now the kitchen floor is a wet mess of needles, puddles and clumps of snow .........

I get my trusty bow saw and start cutting about 5 inches off the base,
and after about 10 minutes, I try to insert it in the tree stand, but it doesn't fit
The base diameter is still too big for the stand, so I have to saw it again. Aghhh.
For those of you that have never sawed a frozen tree with the sap sticking to the saw, it's not that easy.
By now I realize that I should take off my sneakers because I'm making the wet tile floor all muddy,

After a couple of minutes of walking around that wet kitchen floor in my socks,
they became totally soaken, so I removed them also.
My feet were now starting to freeze from "mopping" up all that ice water.

So after cutting the tree a second time more needles have shaken off,
but I did finally get the tree to fit in the stand. However, it's still too tall to stand upright,
so I now have to cut off about a foot from the top, giving it an un-natural funky look

It's now that I realize that I have not only been walking around barefoot on a cold, wet floor,
but also now stepping in sticky tree sap,
which with each step I took, only re-deposited it in more places all over the floor,
............. and also totally covering the bottoms of both of my feet.

By now my feet are starting to get numb. When I looked at them, the bottoms were totally green
from hundreds of glued on pine needles which had adorned me like the sprinkles on Christmas cookies.
????

Since I was cold, wet and sticky, I scampered upstairs to take a hot shower,
now leaving a tacky trace of evidence with each footstep on the stairway carpet.
Even in the hot shower, I had trouble getting the pine tar and needles off the bottoms of my feet,
and some pine needles were starting to clog the drain.
After showering, I put on a clean pair of socks to prevent me from making more of a mess,
as I didn't totally get all the pine tar off my feet

God Bless Rock'n Rita, who patiently let me rant, and so lovingly cleaned the kitchen floor and carpet.

........ and THAT my fellow LVA's was the LAST TIME that I ever bought a real Christmas Tree


MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY !!!!!

Rick

Hey Rick: How hard was it to type this thread with that sTicKy pINe tAr oN uR fInGeRssss?1?

Well Blade, that incident happened years ago and the tree sap has finally washed off.


Rick

This thread is beginning to sound like a Rock'n Griswold Christmas

You read my mind. We should have Rick tell us about putting up his outdoor Christmas lights.

By the way, many of the artificial trees have the christmas lights on them, so you don't have to spend hours putting them on and later taking them off. The only thing I miss on a real tree is that scent.

Loved the story Rick! Reminds me of the incident my hubby refers to as the" Texas Chainsaw Christmas Tree Massacre" that occurred many years back when we first moved into our house. I apparently had a bit of an issue with "guesstimating" how big a tree I could fit in our living room when I went out on a solo tree hunt - hey, I was only off by about 4 feet!
When I got home and realized the error of my ways I determined I was still going to get the darn thing up and decorated before hubby got home from his afternoon shift at work. Delusions of a real Hallmark Christmas dancing in my head! When he walked through the door several hours later, he was greeted with a stairway, hallway and living room strewn with needles, branches, hacked off pieces of stump, boxes of as yet unused decorations, etc. - and a very frustrated and exhausted wife! He almost had a near death experience when his first comment was something like "have you beaten it into submission yet?". It's been a co-op deal since then - I bring the tape measure and he brings a proper saw, and we both manhandle it into place now. Lesson learned.

One year a neighbor sold nearly everyone on the block Christmas trees for $10. Decent looking, full size trees. Thought we really scored.

Christmas morning, yikes!, sticky stuff and little critters crawling on the presents under the trees.

A fast un-decorating and out to the curb it went.

What a sight to behold, just about every house on the block had a Christmas tree out on the curb early Christmas morning...ha. We got what we paid for.

Neighbor got the stink-eye from everybody for a while.

Artificial all the way for me. Our holiday tradition used to be, set up the tree, pull out the strands of lights, which we then plugged in to ensure they were working before we put them on the tree. 1/2 the string lit up, 1/2 did not. Sit for an hour, looking for the one loose bulb, finally get it all to work, and put it on the tree. once on the tree, plug it in and stand back to admire - 1/2 the set not working again. After about 3 hours of this, hubby jumps in car, goes to the store and buys all new lights. We did this every year!!!! Now we have an artificial tree with those filament fiber optic lights, changes colors, very pretty, no bulb except one large one in base of tree. We don't miss the old tradition at all.

Ahh, . . . DonDiego presents a solution:
Plug-In Artificial Christmas Tree Fragrance Kit - Real Balsam Fir Scent

And for some variety: