Christmas Tree

When Stiners and I first moved into our own apartment, she requested (well demanded) that we get a x-mas tree. I was fairly opposed to the idea. Having been raised in a jewish household, there were never trees inside the house. My dad built a "hanukkah bush" some thirty-five years ago. Its a wooden box with Christmas lights inside it and a plastic diffuser to make the lights look, umm, cooler. It was hella low matience.

Stina wanted me to endorse the concept of killing a tree, paying a LOT of money for it, putting a stand on it, decorating it, undecorating it, and throwing it out. Sweet. Guess who won that fight? Thus, we got a tree. As a tree newbie, I had no concept of how ridiculously difficult it is to put a stand on it. Two hours later, I was ready to burn the motherfucker. After that year, I learned that I could throw money at it and have the tree people put the stand on it. Money well spent. That is, if you consider paying for a tree and installation money well spent.

So, now Stina gently warns me when tree time is approaching. She knows how grumpy I will get, so she kinda prods me along until the fateful night. We always get our tree at Clancy's, the local tree place in the Inner Sunset. All the employees at Clany's are somewhat off kilter. These are the tree people.

On Thursday, after burgers at Bill's Place, we headed over to Clancy's. Stina carefully selected our 4 ft tree in less the a half hour, and had the people there carefully butcher it. Apparently there were way too many lower branches, so they had to go. The guy who was helping us was completely insane. Since this is Stina's outing, I let her deal with him. At one point he had her holding nails that he was hammering in. After sensing her terror, he decided to hold the nails, and proceeded to repeatedly hit his hands very hard with a hammer. Eventually we had a disfigured tree, an old stand, and he left us to deal with it. I freaked out. I didn't want to have to attach the stand. Eventually another employee, who was far less insane, came over to help. Another half-hour later, we still couldn't get the stand to work. Then, she tells about the other type of stand, the one which is really easy to put in. What? Other type of stand? Are you fucking kidding me? All they have to do is use their dandy drilling machine, drill a hole, and the stand screws in. OMG! We're getting one. Right NOW!

So, we did.

All those years, we lived in ignorance. Get the screw in stand, people.