Squirrel!

One of my very favorite Christmasy things is watching that part in Christmas Vacation where the squirrel comes out of the tree and all hell breaks loose in the Griswald house.  It is ridiculousness at it’s finest. 

Want to know what else is ridiculousness at it’s finest this Christmas season?  My mother.

For those of you who are new here, my mom has been featured several times on So Wonderful, So Marvelous.  There was the time she met that guy from Nine Inch Nails, her karma points buying & the time she met Martha, and my favorite… the time she ran into Snoop Dog.

This year, my mom took Finnegan to the Christmas tree farm to pick out the tree.  She pulled up to her building and pulled the tree into the elevator from the loading dock.  Then she pulled the tree into the living room and called my sister to help her lift it up.

The tree was ten feet tall.

Why, you rightly ask, was she pulling the tree in all by herself?

She was arguing with my step-dad, so instead of asking for his help, she said fuck it, I don’t need a man to put up a tree.

In fact, I believe, according to my sister, that is exactly what she said as they put the lights on the tree.

The next morning, she came out to the living room.  The lights were out on the tree and she thought maybe that she blew a fuse.

Nope.

She put the ladder up and climbed up to start pulling the lights back off the tree.

It tilted ever so slightly.

She said at that point she was thinking, “well this can’t be good…”

She climbed back off the ladder, climbed under the tree and started turning the screw to tighten it, it was about then that she should have shouted Timberrrrrrr.  {Crappy cell phone pics compliments of my sister Lyndsey.}

She was lucky. It went in between two columns in the living room narrowly missing a lot of glass, my great great grandmother’s newly refurbished buffet, a lamp or two, plants, and the furniture.  Ten feet of crashing tree {and ladder} is a lot.   Allow me to illustrate it’s lucky path of non-destruction with this picture from Thanksgiving…

You would think that maybe this is where our story ends, but alas, not in this family.

Who does she call to help her with the now fallen ten foot tree?  My sister.

They get it righted without {much} incident.  It was about then that she realized that she has no way to keep it upright so she tells Lyndsey to HOLD THE TEN FOOT TREE UP while she figures out a solution. 

And then she took a picture of her.

An hour or so.  Some emergency phone calls to the Davester.  Some mortar patching, cable, and wiring the tree to the wall later… all is well that ends well.

How much are you wishing you were a part of this family Christmas right now?   Yeah, me neither.