Why Must I Fail At Every Attempt At Masonry?

With very little fanfare, and scant attention paid by the national media, last night was Christmas tree raising night at Balsawood.

The festivities actually began on Sunday last when yours truly, the lovely Atomizerette and The Boy made our annual trek to the local garden store to pay them an ungodly amount of cash so they could strap a dead coniferous tree to the top of our car and have us haul it off their property with seasonally adjusted smiles on each and every one of our frozen faces. Not a bad racket, I must say.

Unfortunately, the pleasant part of the festivities ended shortly thereafter. Once our new dead tree was rather unceremoniously deposited upon the living room floor, it became time to introduce the tree stand into the mix. After my strong, and repeated, recommendation, the lovely Atomizerette purchased an all metal stand during last year's post-Christmas inventory sale-abration at WalCoMart. The plastic one we had used in previous years was...well, rather used. It is now, thankfully, no longer with us (though some of the curse words I used during last year's tree raising still hang heavy in the air).

My hopes were high as I removed the unused stand from its box, which had this rather sturdy image imprinted upon it. I'm sure the stand is as sturdy as it appears...in some bizarre backwards universe where mere humans have the ability to somehow muster up the inordinate amount of patience required to actually put this confounded thing together, then coax it onto the base of the tree without having the whole thing fall apart again and then tighten the eyebolts (which are way too large for their pre-drilled holes, mind you) deep into the trunk all while keeping the tree standing upright and straight, maintaining complete sanity and preserving an unspilled cocktail.

My cocktail remained unspilled (naturally) but my sanity is as apt to be seen in these parts again as Miss Waldron's red colobus monkeys are. I seriously got to a point in this process where I felt compelled to hastily pull the stand off the trunk of the tree, march loudly to the front door and fling the offending hunk of metal into the middle of my snow covered lawn (though I was actually aiming for the street). I really hope none of my neighbors happened to be looking out their window at this moment because I'm certain I looked like a severely crack-addled discus thrower. It felt damn good, though.

After the ensuing emergency trip to Home Depot, during which the lovely Atomizerette and The Boy discussed my immediate need for anger management classes, we are now the proud owners of a "never-fail" Cinco tree stand (yes, it's plastic) that required all of about five minutes to work its magic on our now beautifully decorated Christmas tree.

With peace and harmony restored to Balsawood I can now say to you all, best wishes for a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year...except to the filthy cretins at Jack-Post Corporation. You can come collect the pile of useless metal off my lawn any time now.