Lights, Camera, Action!
posted in Frenzied Daddy, fathers |This is the most lights I’ve put on the house in … Well, ever. There’s a strand along the roof, one in the window, one on the Japanese Maple and even a little net of lights on the Rhody in front. Not to mention the tree.
Oh, Krampus, the tree. We went up to our new favorite lot; ($20 per tree, u-cut) SkyLine Tree Farm. It was surprisingly muddy; I should have worn shoes with better traction. I slipped and … “got mud on my butt” is an understatement. It was still wet an hour later and when I got into the car I sat on my coat. I fell on my hand and after the mud treatment my palm is nice and soft.
finally we settled on a tree. It was cute, and about 8 feet tall. Nice and bushy Noble Fir, with places for bigger ornaments. A great little tree. I crawled under the branches and got to work with the tree saw. And worked, and worked. The wii fit wasn’t much help. I was laying down to get to the trunk, so my angle of attack wasn’t so great and my shoulder still hurts (two days later) from having to hold the saw up. The tree was very wide down at the base and after forty five minutes of sawing I realized the cut was all twisted and wouldn’t match up anyway.
Ms B gave me permission to start again; so I went up a foot and cut it again. It only took about 15 minutes after starting that cut. Tied our kill to the roof of the Ford and drove home.
When we got it home, we realized a flaw in our plan. The base wasn’t long enough to touch the bottom of the stand while the branches sat on the ring at the top of the stand. After trying to “just screw it in” (the cats knocked it over) and then trying some blocks under the tree to hold it up (Ima gonna put this tree up on blocks in my yard and fix it right up) (the cats knocked it over again), Ms B decided that a straight, shorter tree with fewer branches was better than a taller tree tilted at at 45 degree angle. Honest, I thought the angle tree was nice. But I pulled it out and lopped off the ring of bottom branches with the circular saw.
Now, it’s about 6 feet tall and actually kind of cute, in a “why did we buy a 4 foot tree” sort of way.
The kittens adore it, but most importantly, the girls love it. With the lights on the house, it’s been pretty fantastic. Now I’m ready for hibernation- I’m tired and sore and my knuckles are all scratched up.
