In No Particular Order

A few snippets, just to empty my brain, then I need to go catch up on y'all's blawgs.

On Monday night, we went to get a Christmas tree (this is our first since moving out here, as we--or at least I--always traveled back to Chicago for the holidays, it never made sense to get a tree). I'd intended for us to buy one from the stand a friend recommended, run by and profiting at-risk youth. But when we got to the lot, we saw neither flora nor potential felons, so we moved on. Two more lots, and we began to realize that we'd clearly missed the memo that said that all trees must be purchased by Sunday, December 12th, unless you wanted a Charlie Brown-esque twig. (Does this seem really early to anyone else? Maybe I'm spoiled, as we grew up with mainly--gasp!--fake trees and MOTH and I used to live across the street from a parking lot that became a Christmas tree lot during December, so we would just watch out our window for a good time to pop over. The entire selection, purchasing, and transportation process would take about twelve minutes.)

Sidebar: I just had the memory of the next-to-last Christmas with my mom. MOTH was working, so he stayed out here, and I was home with my folks. Dad had hauled up the tree box and we were in the process of assembling the tree when we noticed...an odor. A musty, mildewy sort of odor. We deduced that the tree had gotten wet during a recent basement flood. We kept trying to put a good face on it, but the reality was that our family Tannenbaum smelled vaguely but persistently of old wet socks. So we abandoned construction and Dad and I hauled the fake branches out to the cold snowy yard, in hopes of airing them out. Meanwhile, Mom spread the tree skirt expectantly around the 1 1/2"-wide green wooden dowel rod that formed the "trunk" of the "tree." The next evening, we tried again. Still that smell. We gave it another day, and the smell was fainter, but not gone. I'm not going to name names, because this isn't that kind of blog, but someone had the bright idea of spraying the branches with pine-scented Lysol. Which killed whatever mildewy microscopic creatures were nestling in the PVC needles (which were likely rife with lead! Yippee!) but left a smell that, while different from mildew, was not exactly...tree-like in nature. Back outside they went. We finally gave up a few days before Christmas and just assembled the damn thing, holding our breath during the decorating. It was fine in the house, but if you leaned close to place a present under the tree, you were likely to wonder who was giving someone the Parfum du Hospital Floor. End sidebar.

Anyway, it got late, so MOTH dropped me and the Tank off at home so we could start dinner, then went off and bought a tree. By the time he came back, it was time for dinner and then putting the baby to bed, so he ended up setting it up while I was laying down with El Boyo. We were planning on putting the lights and ornaments on with Tankbaby the next night, so we just left the tree alone and went about our evening. The next morning, when Tankbaby went into the living room, he was delighted. "Tee? Tee? Biiiiiiih! Dah! Dah! Tee!" ("Tree? See? Biiiiig! Soft! Soft! Tree!") He couldn't get enough of this marvel. I told MOTH, "If just a tree provokes this kind of reaction, Christmas morning is going to BLOW HIS TINY EVERLOVING MIND."


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Speaking of the Man Of The House (it's been a while since I explained the MOTH acronym; also, I'm still struggling with a new nickname for Tankbaby. He continues to be quite tall, with substantial cheekage, but he is not the chunky monkeybabe he once was. Tanktot was Benevola's suggestion, but it makes me think of tatertots. Mmmm....tatertots.), where was I? Oh, yes, your thoughts on this, please: a few nights ago, I was working on Christmas shopping while MOTH played a video game on his phone. At one point he said, "Huh. This is weird. I'm playing this World War II game, but it's a Japanese game, so I'm on the other side." I asked, "You're playing a World War II game, as the Japanese?" He answered blithely, "Yep. Just bombed Pearl Harbor."

Now, I'm a hippie liberal anti-gun pro-public service yay-gays anti-war no-nukes kinda gal who has occasionally wistfully flirted with Canadianism. But I still found myself muttering to him, "Traitor."

Right? I mean, even in a video game, you don't bomb Pearl Harbor. It's in bad taste. I don't care what you thought of that Ben Affleck movie.


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And finally, because he knows when you're sleeping and when you're awake...LoveGreg is back. Just a friend request, no poorly-comma'd letter. I...I don't know. I think we may have wrung all the humor out of him and now it's just tiresome. Feel free to correct me on this. But, dude. You're going to make me block you? On Christmas?!

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Huh. Snippettier than I thought. I gotta go to bed. Don't write anything too funny tonight; I'll check on you guys tomorrow.