December 9

“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets. To plant a pine, one need only own a shovel.” Aldo Leopold

Larry Wilde, The Merry Book of ChristmasNever worry about the size of your Christmas tree. In the eyes of children, they are all 30 feet tall.
Charles N. BarnardThe perfect Christmas tree? All Christmas trees are perfect!


Clearly I was a little premature in thinking I could do everything on my Christmas list AND write about it. I'm beginning to think there might be some kind of scientific phenomenon that occurs at this time of year. While the amount of things that need to get done is tripled, the time to do it all halved. I've learned that if I had really wanted to post 25 Christmas blogs, then I should have started in July. Which is also when I should have started baking and buying gifts.


Enough of making excuses. I'm all about going easy on myself. Why add self-recrimination to the list of holiday stressors.


Today we bought our Christmas tree. I use the word "we" rather loosely. Jean was at church and Jack was at school, so that left only Dad and I to search out the area tree lots for the perfect tree. Actually I was kind of excited that I didn't get a Grinch-like "I'm not interested" from Dad. But once we parked at in front of the trees, I was sent off to find the tree by myself.


I didn't go uninformed, however. At breakfast Dad, the engineer, had determined mathematically the exact size we needed to buy. I think the formula went something like this:

A. From floor to ceiling = 8.0 ft.

B. Allowance for stand = 1.0 ft.

C. Allowance for table = 1.5 ft.

D. Allowance for star = .5 ft.


A-B-C-D = 5 ft. tree

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