Tis The Season

Well we finally gave in to our own pressure yesterday and bought a Christmas tree.

It's all of 3 feet tall and is sitting proudly on the dining table. Well we ARE in a 5th wheel after all so couldn't go mad with some 7 ft monstrosity that Pixie would probably pull down anyway.

Dennis hasn't seen it yet but as I type this, there is movement in the bedroom - which of course translates to movement all over the trailer ! We hope he'll be delighted with the surprise although the effect won't be as great as it's 9am and although it's a dull start to the day, it's quite bright in here. Deb and I put up the tree late last night after he had gone to bed and we've never erected and decorated a tree in such a short time either.

I'm all in favour of 3 ft trees as you might guess.

The speed of the decorating was improved greatly by the fact that it's a tree with built in fibre optic lights. Awesome. We helped it's looks a lot by getting a strip of 100 extra lights so now when it's switched on, we need to don our sunglasses and slap on factor 25 at least. It's a beast.
I bet the electric meter disc is flying around like a demented buzz saw now.

Sadly the tree has no fairy on top. Hard to get a fairy small enough to perch atop a 3ft tree - so we made do with a nice star shaped bow of the type you see on a well wrapped pressie. It works for me.

I goofed with the tree instructions last night as I was carried along with the over confidence that comes with putting together something with really only 2 parts. You have your tree and you have it's base. Sorted. Well actually, no.

Being a fibre optic tree, the base was quite a technological masterpiece with bits and pieces worthy of the inner workings of the space shuttle. In my haste to see it all up and working, I looked at what I thought was the first page of the instructions as it had 4 little diagrams and I'm really into diagrams when putting things together. Diagrams CAN help to overcome any issues with hilarious but confusing pidgeon English text. You know the sort.

Fasten item 1 with 2 using dropdown of it can be done with flat head driver of screws.

It's always a source of wonder to me that ANY flat pack furniture gets put together at all. I have to assume people just throw the instructions away and muddle through it all with a mix of hope and prayer. I'm sure many a folding chair came in a box labelled dining table and that people are sleeping uneasily on a bed which was really meant to be a bedroom closet.

Anyhoo, back to the tree instructions. I couldn't fault them. They were plain and simple. Me ? Lots of fault as I'm also plain and simple I guess. I somehow missed the first page and, swayed by the diagrams, went straight to page 3. I told Deb, who was hanging on my every word, to get a Philips screwdriver, turn over the base, remove the 4 screws and unscrew the bulb casing. I stopped reading while she did this. Once the screws were on the table and she was trying to stop bits and pieces newly released from the base from joining the screws, I read on.

Remove the old bulb and replace with the new one.

WHAT ? Old bulb ? Replace with what now ? Why would we have to...........oh crap !

I looked at the top of the page and sure enough, there in bold print, were the dreaded words - Instructions for Bulb Replacement. D'oh.

So after Deb had smiled and said, oh never mind, and my arm had stopped throbbing from her blow, the base was reconstructed with the perfectly good existing bulb back in place. The tree (part one) was lowered into the base (part 2) and the deed was done.

I think I muttered that I'd still have liked a diagram !

We added a lot of dangly type ornaments and in the time it takes to say "you are an idiot and I'm a bigger idiot for listening to you", the tree was up and running and worthy to be seen in Trafalgar Square or the Rockefeller Centre or wherever. I'm sure the box packers in some downtown Shanghai industrial complex were clapping (or bowing or doing Tai Chi) in appreciation of our efforts.

And it was all worth it as Dennis stood just now on the top of the 3 little stairs leading from the bedroom and looked in awe at the twinkling masterpiece before him.

"Wow. Wow. That's AWESOME" he finally managed to get out. "Is coffee ready" ?

He's not easily impressed.