He-Man? Not quite.

All right. I'll start this off by saying that I'm somewhat of a "Scrooge". I don't like all of the commercialism that surrounds Christmas, and therefore, a lot of Christmas crap annoys me. I don't like Christmas music, I don't like shopping and I don't like real Christmas trees. However, my wife does. So, every year I put up with the mess. I put up with trying to find a place to dispose of it. I put up with the needles all over the carpet. Ugh!

I've hated our tree in the past but this year's tree has reached a whole new level. First of all, we bought our tree from one of the Big Brothers, Big Sisters of the Tri-State lots (the only good thing about it). I figure if I HAVE to have a real tree, I might as well support a good cause. Well, they don't have a tree shaker thingy at their lot. So, when we get home with the tree, we notice that, it is, in fact, full of dead needles. So I figure, I'll just "He-Man" the tree over my head and shake the piss out of it (and all of the dead needles in the process). Well, it worked like a charm! My wife came outside to check my status (which usually means tell me a way to do it better), and I actually said this to her: "I can't believe how strong I am sometimes". Well, needless to say, I shouldn't have said that. Because when I turned to carry the tree into the house, my back went one way and the rest of my body went another. Ouch! Major cussing and crying. I wish that was the end of the story.

So now, the tree is in the house. My wife helped me gimp the tree into the base in the living room. No big deal, right? Well, time to water the tree. I dumped three large pitchers into the base and assumed everything was fine. I assumed. And you know what they say. Ten minutes later, my wife said to me, "didn't you water the tree? It's bone dry". "How odd", I thought. Well, it turns out, the tree had knocked out the bottom of the tree stand and the three large pitchers of water were all over my living room carpet! We (actually I should say I) had the fun task of moving a fully decorated tree from one tree stand to another. Fun stuff.

Moral of the story? My Christmas tree = a pain in the ass and a trip to the chiropractor!