eileen was her name

I had the most moronic Christmas tree ever this year. And this is how it came to be.

Right before we decorated for Christmas my neighbours from directly across the road came by. They are a teensy bit older, like maybe not as old as my parents but definitely older than me. They carried with them, like wisemen following the Dabels star, a ginormous Christmas tree.

It's fibre optic, they said. It's 9 feet tall, they said. It's too big for our living room, they said, but perfect for yours. We don't need it anymore but would love to see it lit up in your house, they said.

You see, I already have tree. It's fake but it's great and has served me well for many years. But a 9 foot fibre optic tree? Already with the wee little lights and such? So tall it would take a ladder to decorate? Yes please.

I said yes please.

Well, the tree was so ridiculous it needs to be acknowledged on this here blog, because I am nothing if not a full blown believer in the ridiculous.

I couldn't get it to stand up straight. I tried fixing the base. I tried fixing the tree. It had a natural born tilt, there was nothing that could be done. I decided that maybe a 9 foot tree with a tilt was exactly the kind of tree this family and home deserved. We let her be.

But every few days she tilted more.

And she hummed. When lit up she hummed this horrific hum that aggravated Gemma so terribly it is a wonder anyone in this house got out alive.

We needed to name her, obviously. She was about to ruin our lives and anything with that kind of power deserves a name.

My friend Shauna named her. Eileen. It was perfection.

And so blatantly obvious it begged laughter of the out loud variety.

The man kept saying he'd fix it. He said he'd tie it to something as to keep the inevitable from happening.

Until, the inevitable happened. Eileen leaned. You know what I'm saying?

                                     

                         

Once it finally fell over and I begrudgingly tipped it back up, and I say begrudgingly because what I wanted to do was set fire to the world and burn that stupid tree right up (and plus, the wee one cried when I said there was going to be no tree this year so obviously I set it back up), it had this sad little curl in the tip thereof. We left it as is, the big giant squooshed up mess it was and went on celebrating Christmas despite the tree, that was now fish lined to the blinds.

                            

Because of the hum aggravating my mental state so dramatically we had to stop plugging it in, therefore leaving it light-less, which was the exact reason I took the tree in the first place! 

And that is the sad tale of the tree that leaned and is now covertly hidden inside a dumpster as to not alert the generous neighbours whom injected my life with this hideous burden.