What I've Been Reading Instead of Cleaning My House

Sunday, December 16, 2007

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

When Nigel and I were first married, we always had a real Christmas tree (or one that I made out of construction paper if it was an especially bad year). One year we were buying our Christmas tree at one of those home improvement places. As always, Nigel got distracted by something shiny and left me alone in the store to pick out the tree, buy it, and drag it 6,000 miles through the parking lot to the car (OK, so maybe it wasn't 6,000 miles, but I was NINE MONTHS PREGNANT with Jeffrey at the time, so it felt like it).

Anyway, after that fun little experience, I decided to buy an artificial tree. I picked out a good one that was on sale and then couldn't fit the box in my little Toyota. I had to call my nephew, Fred, and have him pick it up in his truck (I swear, I get more pathetic every year).

We had that tree for many years. Like most pack-rat Americans, our living room got more and more furniture and less and less room for a Christmas tree. My niece and her husband, Babs and Spike, offered us a skinnier artificial tree that would take up much less space. We gladly accepted and put the new tree up.

What to do with our old tree? Nigel put it up on FreeCycle and I was afraid that it was much too late in the Christmas season for anyone to want a tree. Boy was I wrong. We had at least 25 people who wanted that tree. Nigel quickly dismissed the ones who wanted it because they didn't want needles on their "brand new carpeting" or bought a bigger house with "higher ceilings" and wanted a bigger tree. Being Nigel, he picked a family who wanted to give Christmas to a woman whose husband died three years ago, leaving her with two children to raise on her own and she just lost her job. They picked it up and I must admit it filled us all with the Christmas spirit. Way to go, Nigel.

Oh, by the way, I'm having the kids decorate the house for Christmas this year. Our new skinny Christmas tree is only decorated 2/3 of the way up (as high as my kids can reach), but I'm keeping it that way.

12 comments:

dalene said...

I love that Nigel was picky amongst the freecyclers. Way to go!

b. said...

Sheesh, now I gotta check out freecyclers! Never heard of it before!

Lois said...

CW -- yes, he's very picky.

B -- FreeCycle is great. I heard about it through GEO. It's like Craig's List, but everything is FREE.

Rynell said...

Freecycle is super.

Lois said...

RYNELL -- I love Freecycle, but I spend my life deleting their messages from my inbox.

Geo said...

I know that Freecycle is true. Amen.

Geo said...

(So why am I not subscribed now?)

Lois said...

GEO -- because you don't want to spend your days deleting the 500 messages for diaper coupons and moving boxes?

Geo said...

Yes! that's it!

Lois said...

GEO -- I thought so. I'm almost to that point.

Am'n2Deep said...

Can I just say, even though I'm sure you already know, that your Nigel is just great.

And I love that you let the kids decorate. My kids would still be standing there with their mouths dropped open in shock if I gave them the go-ahead.

Lois said...

AMN2DEEP -- yeah, I'm lacking the "home decorating" gene, so I just let my kids do everything. It usually ends up looking better than if I were to do it.