Ready to Rumble

It's about to go down, y'all. I have been fighting with a Christmas tree for weeks already and things are about to get REAL ugly.

I will prevail.

The first challenge involved the awful, terrible, no-good invention that is pre-lit trees. I'm sure there are people that love them, but pre-lit trees were a gift sent from the devil. They rank right up there with thong underwear, people who whistle, and mornings. That is the very long way of saying that a portion of the lights were dead. I spent hours fighting with them - looking for a loose bulb, using this guy to give them a jolt (it seriously works more often than not), replacing fuses, and all sorts of tricks. Alas, a section of the tree was not as merry and bright as I demand.

So I had to pull off the 15 or so strings of lights I had added to the pre-lit tree. What? You don't add lights to your pre-lit tree? That right there is what separates the rookies from the pros. Go pro, y'all. There is no such thing as too many lights.

So I stripped off all of the lights, but then the pre-lit lights had to be ripped off. I couldn't handle looking at so many dark bulbs. They had to go. There was two hours of cutting and ripping involved, but then the tree was finally naked.

So I put lights back on it. I had to compensate for the ones that had been lost in the battle, so that took way longer than I would have liked. Ugh.

Fast forward a day or two, and it was time for ornaments. Except not because SQUIRREL! Do you know how many times I can start decorating a tree without actually decorating a tree? The answer is A LOT. I started every day for two weeks but kept getting distracted and nothing much happened.

But! Finally! Finally I created a plan that might get the job done. I decided that I would do one storage container of ornaments per day. It was an achievable goal that would have had the tree finished before Christmas. Barely, but that's not the point. IT WAS A GOOD PLAN.

I put four freakin' ornaments on the thing before it started. FOUR. On ornament number five (of probably 1000, if we're being honest), I reached out to put it on the tree and the branch ... moved. Just a little. So I reached a little further and it moved again.

PANIC.

I dropped to the ground to see what was going on and realized that the metal leg that was keeping the tree from jumping out the window was starting to bend in a way that it isn't meant to bend. It was sloooooooooooooooowly bending and I lunged with all my might to grab hold of the tree before it crashed to the ground. If you'd like to imagine the funniest image ever, that was probably it. I had both hands firmly on the center pole of the tree even as it kept leaning. I was contorted under the tree in a position that has never before been seen outside of the game Twister. There was a dog licking my face because it was near the floor, a cat running laps under the tree, and a preschooler sleeping a few feet away. In other words, I couldn't scream all of the words I wanted to scream.

And the tree kept leaning. Slowly. Further and further.

The good news is that it stopped before it crashed through the window. I believe that would have been the worst that could have happened because it's a long way down and there is a car right under that window. The even better news is that apparently you can buy new tree stands. WHO KNEW? Even with my ::mumble::mumble::twenty-something::mumble::mumble:: trees I never knew that you can replace the stands. I might even get a spinny stand out of the deal. How cool would a spinning Christmas tree be? EXACTLY.

The bad news, though. The bad news is that there was a point when I was just going to go buy a new tree. It was hours and hours of effort ago, before theis whole mess started. I didn't do it because it's not as much fun to replace a tree as it is to add a new one, so I wanted to save my "Oh, hey. Did I buy another Christmas tree? That's a great question!" deflection game for when I really needed it. I'd rather dance away from that argument with a new tree to decorate, you know? BUT I COULD HAVE SAVED SO MUCH TIME.

So much time.

Now that a Disaster Recovery Plan is in the works, I can acknowledge the other bad news. The other bad news is that I know EXACTLY what went wrong. As the tree started to run away, I saw it. The tell-tale signs of exactly who has been sabotaging my tree.

Kiara.

The long-haired cat who used to adore me has seemingly figured out how to finally get even for that thing called Mila. She's been mad that my lap was stolen from her for YEARS, so she climbed her little butt up that tree and started napping. Bent branches and tufts of fur tell the story.

Kiara and I are about to go to war.