Day forty-two – Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown

Yes, I know there was no entry yesterday. I had things to do, in addition to still being sick as a dog. (Poor me.)

Last year, when I was bemoaning the cost of buying a Christmas tree on the island, my friend Dave offered to chop one down for me. Unfortunately I didn’t receive his offer until after I’d gone out and bought one. But I remembered the offer. Earlier this week, before I got sick (poor me), I arranged to go on a Christmas tree hunt with him yesterday.

Reasons you shouldn’t go out with your friend and his saw looking for a Christmas tree when you’re sick:

1. You’re sick. You can barely stand up, so you don’t want to spend a long time looking for the perfect tree. You just want to get it over with. So, you take Dave at his word that most of the trees on offer are Charlie Brown Christmas trees and you go for the first tree that looks half (or perhaps a quarter) reasonable. In the time it takes you to drive to the turnaround at the end of the road, you spot at least six way better trees, but, because you’re sick, you don’t take Dave up on his offer to stop and saw down another tree.
2. You’re sick. You can’t judge heights. You want a six foot tree, but you end up with a seven and a half foot tree, but put it up anyway without doing much trimming, because you’re convinced that somehow adding tinsel and lights will fix everything.
3. You’re so sick you forget to put on the cheesey Christmas song CD while you’re decorating. This is a tradition!
4. You’re sick. So you get dizzy standing on a chair trying to add the tinsel and the lights and nearly fall off the chair several times. Everything takes a lot longer than it should. By the time you stop at 7pm to look at the progress you’ve made, you are completely knackered. The tree looks awful and now you’re too tired to make that asparagus risotto you were anticipating with much pleasure. You give up for the day and order a takeaway pizza.

The tree needs a foot and a half lobbed off at the top and a lot more branch trimming. I’ll get to that today and tomorrow it will look (pretty) great.

For now I need to get dressed and head down to the post office to stand in what will undoubtedly be an extremely long line to collect two parcels. Hopefully one of them will be Irmani’s Christmas cake.