Christmas with the Watsons

Thursday morning on the Mike & Mike show on ESPN Radio/T.V., one of the Mikes was out, so Erik something or other was filling in for him (he actually filled in most of the week, but this story is particular to Thursday). Danny says this Erik guy is actually an attorney but somehow has connections to ESPN, and he fills in on various radio programs that air on the network from time-to-time. He is well-spoken and seems to be well-groomed for this type of media position.

Somehow, on Thursday morning, the guys started talking about decorating for Christmas and the topic of putting up Christmas trees was being discussed. Big Mike was explaining how his whole family gathers to put up the tree and they listen to Christmas music and have a good time together. Fairly normal, I would assume. When Erik chimed in, he said that he has a "tree guy." Apparently, he doesn't have the skills to put up his outdoor Christmas lights, so he has this guy that he hires to hang all the lights, and while the guy is at his house, he has him put up the Christmas tree, too. I was in shock. How could you possibly pay someone to put up your family tree?? Even if you were a gazillionaire, I would imagine that there would be at least one Christmas tree in your house that your family would put up together. Maybe that's just my idealistic view of the world entering my thought process, but I just couldn't fathom the notion of the "tree guy."

Well, neither could Big Mike. He gave Erik a terribly hard time about it, and even asked Howie Long (who called in on the show to make NFL game predictions) about the "tree guy" idea, and Howie basically laughed in his face, too. It just seems so impersonal to hire someone to put up your family tree. So, Erik agreed to try to put up his own tree on Thursday night and report the results Friday morning.

On Friday morning, Erik said that he had called his brother over on Thursday night to help him with the tree decorating (no involvement from his wife and children was mentioned). He insisted that it was a lot of trouble, and he didn't seem to enjoy the experience, but he did get the thing put up. It was obvious that the "tree guy" will continue to have a job and a paycheck for many Christmases to come.

With Christmas trees fresh on our minds, Danny and I decided to work on ours on Friday evening. Now, keep in mind that this Christmas tree is one I bought last year while Danny was deployed because our old one was too small to hold all of our ornaments (and buying a Christmas tree with a husband in Iraq just seemed like an excellent, mind-numbing distraction). I lugged the thing out of Wal-Mart, loaded it in the Element, unloaded it at the house, put it together, decorated it, blew three fuses, and enjoyed its warmth and welcome for the entire season all by myself. I thought this year would be a simple repeat of the same process. Wrong.

For one, I am hugely pregnant this year, and it seems to take a lot of energy just to breathe these days. Two, Danny is not acquainted with this tree, and he doesn't like that it is pre-lit because he thinks it's just as easy to put lights on the tree yourself. Three, we are in a different house this year and there doesn't seem to be a good spot to put the tree, which is a problem.

But, we set out to get the thing put up so we would have some holiday cheer in our home. The first major problem came when I noticed that Danny wasn't spreading out the branches; he was flattening all of them. This is seriously detrimental to the full Christmas tree look. When I laughed at him about it, he got mad and didn't touch the tree for about two hours. I thought it was funny, and I was going to show him how to do it, but he didn't give me a chance. Score one point for holiday cheer...

Once Danny quit working on the tree, I did too. I wasn't going to crawl all over the place by myself trying to fluff scratchy fake tree leaves. The storm passed over, the Scrooges disappeared, and we re-approached the tree later in the night. This time, we were trying to be sure all the lights were working before we continued with the fluffing and putting together.

Nope. Four branches of lights in the middle of the tree do not work. Fantastic. We changed every fuse, examined every bulb, changed a few bulbs that might have been suspicious, all to no avail. I promise I am not exaggerating when I say that we worked on that tree for three hours with no luck.

Now, the tree is in three separate pieces around our living room and not at all functioning the way it is supposed to. In addition, I have eight, huge Rubbermaid containers of Christmas decorations that are spread out all over the place, and nothing has been put out where it belongs. The only Christmas decorating success I've had this year is hanging the wreath on the front door. Everything else is in a mess that closely resembles the after pictures of a major tornado.

Clearly, this is not going as planned. I am so frustrated because not only do I need to get my house in order for Christmas, but I need to get Tyler's nursery finished. I feel like there is so much to do, so little time, and I think I am just shutting down.

In short, I really, really, really wish I had a "tree guy."