Husbands...God Love Them!

I have to preface this story with a little background information. We have a large Christmas tree. This isn’t some scrawny 9 footer that you get at Hobby Lobby…oh, no, this is 12 full thick feet of hugeness that takes up half our front room. The first year we owned it, I decided to re-label (my friends who know me will understand my need to do this) every branch on the tree with color coded permanent labels. Yes, of course it was already labeled with the usual letters of the alphabet but in addition, I thought it would be helpful to place a color coded zip tie (thank you Costco) on each branch. Each year when I take the tree down, I then zip tie each row of branches together. Then I put them in the two humongous boxes in the order of which they should be taken out and put up the next year. I leave no room for error here.

Last night my husband had a friend over to the house for dinner. He loves to cook for his friends so I let them do the guy thing and eat their steaks in peace while I did crafts with the girls and the neighbor kids. Then my husband and his friend get this wild idea that they want to put up the Christmas tree. I’m thinking “before Thanksgiving?” Hey, what the heck, why not? Do they realize that this thing takes 4 days, one ladder, several batches of hot chocolate and apple cider, trips to the attic and the basement, and a good set of branch fluffing gloves to put this up? That when they are done, they will be dizzy from the high altitude of decorating at 12 feet? That even though they are wearing the branch fluffing gloves that their arms will be scratched and itching from fluffing? No they don’t realize this…but all the more fun for me to watch right?

After about an hour of listening to them crack up at the cat trying to climb each branch that they fluffed, I went in to see how they were doing (since my 6 year old kept coming in to tell me they were doing it all wrong).

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

That’s the English alphabet right? Am I confused? Apparently they were! The first thing they did was dump, yes, dump all the branches on the floor, in a heap. There went the “order of which they should be taken out and put up the next year” plan I so carefully thought out. The next thing they did that I thought odd was they started at the bottom of the tree. So now, when you get to the top you can’t get the ladder close to the tree because the bottom branches span out so wide. But, no biggy right? I mean, they can handle it. They’ll figure it out right? But then I notice that there seems to be no order to the rows. Upon further inspection, I notice that my tree goes from “O” to the next row being “Q”. I say “where’s P?” (I’m looking at blank stares). I repeat “where’s P?” Then they’re both like “there’s a P????” (are you kidding me?) Of course there’s a “P”. Why wouldn’t there be a “P”? And so it goes…if you want something done right, either do it yourself or at least leave your 6 year old in charge!

In their defense, I will say that they screwed down the cushions on my dining room chairs for me last night. I had re-upholstered them myself about 3 months ago and had been asking the husband to screw them back together for me. I should have just done that myself too. I mean, I unscrewed them, I could have just screwed them back…but I wanted him to do it because I upholstered over the holes and I didn’t want to mess it up. So that got done last night and now my Thanksgiving guests can eat safely.