{"id":638,"date":"2002-12-16T14:35:11","date_gmt":"2002-12-16T18:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/wordpress\/?p=638"},"modified":"2002-12-16T14:35:11","modified_gmt":"2002-12-16T18:35:11","slug":"back-in-the-land-of-the-living","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/?p=638","title":{"rendered":"Back in the Land of the Living"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m slowly crawling my way back into the land of the living.  It hasn&#8217;t been easy, even with the oatmeal raisin cookies.  You see, this year, I made the brilliant decision not to get a flu shot.  I figured since I was no longer riding public transportation or working in an office building full of recycled air, I&#8217;d be safe from the flu.  HA!  I have paid in blood for this mistake.  Even worse, I&#8217;ve fallen behind on Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>This year, it was going to be different.  This year, I was going to finish early and enjoy myself.  HA!  Instead, I spent over a week hacking up my lungs while dreaming of unfinished presents danced in my head.  Sigh.  Well, you know what they say, &#8220;if you want to make God laugh, tell Her your plans.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;ve resigned myself to another frantic Chrissie Christmas.  How bad is it?  Well, lets just say, I let Kevin go pick out the Christmas tree by himself yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I&#8217;m really that sick.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure most of you remember the tree fiasco last year, right?  (If not, check out the Dec 17th entry from last year.) Falling behind on the Christmas schedule, I sent Kevin alone into the Christmas fields with two requirements for our tree.  Six feet high, Douglas fir.  After two hours, Kevin returned home with a four foot noble.<\/p>\n<p>But this year, he topped even that experience.  This year, I sent him out with the same requirements.  Six feet &#8211; douglas.  After only 20 minutes he returned with the Most Perfect Tree Ever.  I am so not kidding.  This was an A+ tree.  Cut that morning from the hills of Clackamas, it was trimmed slimly with not a bare spot in sight.  It was a whopping $30 (which is outrageous here in Oregon) but it was worth it.  Kevin was sooooo proud.  He done good.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, sometimes, life is like a painting.  You&#8217;re going along painting away and it looks good but for some reason, you just don&#8217;t know when to stop.  And before you know it, you&#8217;ve added too much blue and your beautiful seascape has turned into a post modern nightmare and all you can do is ask yourself why?  Why couldn&#8217;t I quit while I was ahead??<\/p>\n<p>After letting the Most Perfect Tree Ever dry outside, Kevin picked up a pair of snippers and the tree stand and headed outside.  The plan was to snip off a few low branches, fit it into the stand, and then bring the Most Perfect Tree Ever inside.  Since I didn&#8217;t relish the idea of standing outside in the rain, I let Kevin go at this by himself.  (You can see it coming, right?)<\/p>\n<p>About 10 minutes go by when I suddenly hear massive cursing outside my door and the sound of snipping shears being thrown down in a pique of anger.  Trembling, I opened the door to find that Kevin had massacred the Most Perfect Tree Ever.  I don&#8217;t know what he was thinking but he had cut off the lower half of the tree.  Our front yard was covered in tree branches so thick you couldn&#8217;t see the sidewalk&#8230;&#8230;..and the tree!  Oh the poor poor tree!  What he did to that tree was at least a Class A Felony.  I can&#8217;t describe it &#8211; you&#8217;ll have to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chrissierocks.com\/xmastree.jpg\">see for yourself<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin was furious.  The animals ran upstairs and hid from his fury.  Of course, I couldn&#8217;t stop laughing.  Our tree look hilarious.  This big bushy tree on top and a little exposed trunk below.  He&#8217;d cut off a good 12 inches worth of tree branches.  We did the only thing we could really.  We chopped off the base and are now left with a very nice four foot douglas fir.<\/p>\n<p>Poor, poor Kevin.  He has made me promise to never again make him do anything with a Christmas tree alone again.<\/p>\n<p>Ah, let the joy of Christmas begin!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So I&#8217;m slowly crawling my way back into the land of the living. It hasn&#8217;t been easy, even with the oatmeal raisin cookies. You see, this year, I made the brilliant decision not to get a flu shot. I figured since I was no longer riding public transportation or working in an office building full [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2Kqhb-ai","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chrissierocks.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}