jennanddave.com

Remember that gorgeous tree that we decorated only two weekends ago? Guess where it is now? If you guessed in the dumpster behind our building, give youself a big hug, because you'd be right. Ten days ago, as soon as we set the tree up we filled the stand with water. Before we went to bed, Dave checked the water level, assuming it would need a refill, but it didn't. It didn't the next day either. Or the day after that. Repeat that last sentence until you've made it to today, because two hours ago, it was still sitting in the water that we'd put in the stand when we first got the tree. It didn't drink anything. I've never had that experience with a tree before. Yesterday I noticed that you could snap the ends off of the branches pretty easily. That's also when I noticed how some of the branches had started to curl under themselves.

Last night I had a hard time sleeping (too much Chicken Tikka Masala) so instead I stared into the dark and worried about all the packing we have to do. Then, suddenly I remembered a video I'd seen on the 5 o'clock news of a Christmas tree going up in flames in three seconds, so naturally I started worrying that our tree was going to catch fire and that our entire building would burn down and it would be all our fault. Since I have enough things to feel guilty about, this evening after Henry went to bed, the tree came down. I'm very happy with this decision, but I have a feeling Henry's going to be less than thrilled when he wakes up tomorrow morning and finds his raison d'etre is gone. This afternoon Henry woke up from his nap and ran into the living room. After running around for fifteen minutes he finally stopped long enough to notice the lights on the tree weren't on. He waved his hand in front of it, said "uh-uh!" and looked at me. I asked him what he wanted and he did the hand-wave, "uh-uh" thing again, and after the third attempt at communication, it dawned on me that maybe he was trying to tell me to plug in the lights, so I did. He stared at the tree for a minute, then went back to running around the living room. Like I said, he's going to be one dissappointed little kid tomorrow morning. Or it's not going to register at all.