Bah Humbug

I have been looking for a Christmas tree for quite some time. I was unable to find one that I was pleased with, until Monday night. I went to Extra Foods to pick up a few groceries and saw a tree there that I thought was perfect. It is a 7.5 foot, prelit tree. The thing that really impressed me was that it had 1000 lights, 500 clear and 500 coloured. You could use a remote control to either turn them from coloured to white or have both on at the same time. Jay and I had the chance to go buy this tree this afternoon. I would have got it Monday night, but the box was REALLY heavy and I was certain that it wouldn't fit in my car.

We brought it home and I opened it up this evening. I put it together and we plugged it in and all looked good. It needed a lot of 'fluffing' because the branches were really squished together. When we took a closer look we realized that one section of the coloured lights wasn't on. Shoot! I checked all the plug ins and we got all of them. Dang! So I went through methodically and checked each bulb to make sure none were loose or missing in the section that wasn't on. I found nothing. I was really frustrated by this point with small scrapes and cuts all over my hands and forearms from man-handling this beast of a tree. I made an executive decision that we would keep the tree after putting this much work into it already. We would just turn the burned out section towards the window where no one would see it. So I did that and set to work 'fluffing' up the branches. After spending at least twenty or so minutes doing that I realized that another section of coloured lights had gone out. $%#@&! I was so frustrated by this point that I pulled that tree apart in record speed, jammed it back in the box (I can't believe it fit!) and we took it back. Unfortunately when Jay grabbed the receipt off of the desk, he grabbed the wrong one from Extra Foods. So we got the tree brought into the store and he quickly ran home to get the right receipt. After he came back I bought us some donuts to medicate our frustrations....mmm donuts.

I am getting to the point where I don't even know if I want a tree at all :P Yesterday my Christmas spirit was bumped up by decorating at work then going out for supper for Christmas with my coworkers, and of course Jay coming home from the hospital. Today I feel like my tank is empty again. I may get a real tree...or maybe we will decorate our banister like Jay has wanted to since he saw them and put our gifts under our banister!