It’s January 25th, only 11 months til Christmas!
What?
ok, ok, no, I’m still recovering from last Christmas. No, really. We finally got rid of our tree yesterday. YESTERDAY. January 24th!
This has been, of course, a saga of ridiculousness. I wanted to get it returned 3 weeks ago, when there were “dump your tree here” people at Trout Lake, except… on the Saturday, I had to go out to Cloverdale, and on the Sunday, Nick had the car at work all day. And then the next weekend… Nick had the car in Seattle all day Saturday, and at work on Sunday… and then this weekend, we both had plans on both days…
To say the least, I’ve been getting mightily frustrated with the looming tree in the corner of my livingroom that had been ornament-free for weeks. I’ve been dreaming of ways to get rid of it. Maybe we could … dump it on the front step of a Vanoc building! or… throw it over the balcony and play dumb when the strata yelled at us? Or… dump it in front of a disliked neighbours door and sweep up the evidence that it came from us!
Ok, maybe not.
So, yesterday I was in Cloverdale, returning Jasper to his rightful home (his homecoming included rolling over and peeing all over the place — hah!) and complaining to my mother of my continued tree issues. We could get rid of it, if we could get it strapped to the roof of the car and down to the transfer station in south van. Could we actually get that to happen? Of course not, that would be too easy. And would require both of us in the same room at the same time, with the car. Yeah, not happening.
So, my mother laughed at me, and loaned me her pruning shears. And last night, damned if I didn’t cut every branch off the tree, snip them up nice and small, bag them up, and toss the entire mess in our dumpster. It was ridiculously fun, and aside from a blister on my thumb, pain free and easy. Heck, took less time than driving all the way to the bloody transfer station, too. Messy, sure, but at least all the mess was contained in one corner of the livingroom, rather than being spread all the way from our apartment to the car.
I am now tree free. Sure, there’s some suspiciously piney smelling bags in the dumpster, but I’m going to maintain a “not my problem” attitude. There’s nothing in the “prohibited items” sign on the garbage room door that says anything about trees. We have, in fact, been encouraged to get rid of unsightly dead plants. I’d say this counts!