Christmas Spirit

Well, here it is a week away from Christmas and I find I've not yet lost my head. The shopping is a little more than half done, but I'm not really stressing about it. I probably should be. I've sort of just been fitting it into my regular errands so that I don't really have a lot of extra, or special trips to a lot of different places. Those regular errands just end up taking longer, mostly because of all the annoying people who are part of the Christmas rush (of which I don't identify with because, remember, I am just doing my usual day-to-day shopping).

Jacob and I have been making some holiday crafts out of our very own 're-usable' materials. I'm a notorious wrapping paper saver. Blame my mother, but I take my damn time opening those gifts because you can be sure I'm re-using that paper on your next birthday gift. But hey, I've never had to spend money on wrapping paper. You should see the Advent calendar we made out of only five materials/tools: Old cardboard, used wrapping paper, stickers, glue and scissors. If you send me a Christmas card, you may very well get it (or someone else's) back the next year, just the cover, with a cute picture glued onto the back and decorated by a small child, holes punched in the corners and tied with the ribbon (wrinkles steamed out over boiling water) that probably came atop a baby shower gift 3 1/2 years ago. You can hang it on your Christmas tree!

Speaking of which, we got ours last week. We found a place that sells them with the root ball attached. They were $60 originally, but luckily for us we're such procrastinators that they were already 25% off by the time we got there. We debated for way too many days, each one of which Jacob begged several times for us to get a tree already so we could decorate it. On Monday I scoped out a Norfolk pine at Price Chopper (of all places) when no one else in town had any to sell. I made Zach go back there with me at night so we could just go ahead and get the ugly thing that someone advised we might pass off as a Christmas tree. It'll be our first so Jacob wouldn't have cared. But I really want Zach to be happy with our tree because for the most part we're doing the Santa thing my way (which is that, "Sure he exists, but he's not going to break into our house at night and leave coal if you're bad"), and for a fleeting moment a visual flashed before my eyes of the picture of our tree, here, on this blog, and it looked so pitiful. We were lifting it off the platform, the deal was 90% sealed, and we both hesitated. The only thing after that keeping us from just walking out was that Jacob wanted it so badly. He didn't care what the hell it looked like, all that mattered was that we were together, and that is truly the Christmas spirit.

Eventually we had to leave because I pointed out that we were standing in the middle of the produce section of a grocery store, staring at ugly little trees. I imagined employees lined up around the security monitor putting money in a sack, betting on whether we were going to leave with a tree or not. I resolved that tomorrow would be THE DAY.

The next day we made it to the nursery with five minutes left before closing. And as I stood there, half listening to the lady deliver strict instructions on how to plant the three-foot tree we were spending an absurd amount of money on, I got an outsider's view of the scene layed out before me; my boys all scraggly and in their matching Carhartts, one with his assured look, the other a gleam of admiration in his eyes. I could have stayed in that moment forever.