Never Rob A Bank Without A Plan

This is my Christmas tree. A bit like the living things it is a twisted simulacrum of, this zip-tied concatenation of impulse and panic buys came into being organically.

I haven't decorated my home for Christmas for the past two years. There was no need. We were going away for the holidays and no one was coming over. I'm long since past the uplift I used to feel as a kid when my sisters and I rummaged through the boxes in the basement to find the ornaments we'd put away the year before. So, unless there are witnesses, I give Christmas decorations a pass. 

But, this year we are holding an event between Christmas day and New Years, so I set myself the task of figuring out what to do to make the premises more festive.

I had no plan, just one principle: no freshly-sacrificed conifer would cross my threshold. The title to this post is good advice (as is "never use your tongue to stop a fan"). It applies to holiday decorations, too.

I started my journey at the Loblaws in Maple Leaf Gardens. I was thinking more about the food for the event than the decoration but as I wandered around disoriented and slightly panicking, I saw large packages of reasonably priced and attractive Christmas crackers (the ones you pull apart and find a paper hat in - not the kind you eat). I thought I would come back in a few days and pick some of those up. Then I remembered what has happened every time I have ever had such a thought.

Fully panicked, I grabbed a couple of boxes with more than twenty crackers, and fled to the check out. "And what am I going to do with these?" I wondered as I walked home.

Almost immediately came the notion to make them into the Christmas tree. I bounced this idea off of Bruce, who at least half listens when I'm talking. "Sounds good," he said, as he would have had I told him I wanted to make the tree out of killer bees.

Heartened by my husband's strong endorsement, my next errant thought was that I needed an armature for the tree, meaning the next logical step was Canadian Tire.

Scouring the pawed-over-looking contents of the shelves of the Christmas section at CT, I found a tall, skinny, silver-snowflake-covered tree-like thing, advertised as a table top decoration. It was on sale for half price.

When I got it home, I discovered that it was in fact two trees, with a smaller, skinnier one tucked inside the other. I jammed the small one on top of the bigger one, and, voila, a pretty tall, pretty ugly tree-shape just begging to be obscured by something more attractive.

I had my armature. I had twenty-four Christmas crackers. What's next?

Two pieces of equipment I have never trusted myself with are a chain saw and a glue gun, which is too bad, because the latter would have come in handy at this point. My fall back is zip ties, those cleverly engineered strips of plastic good for so many uses including restraining prisoners and, this time, attaching festive Christmas crackers to a plug ugly sparkly cone.

Were this actually a project that I'd found in the pages of a glossy magazine, I would have had detailed instructions in 8-point type toward the back to follow, and a pattern showing how to start at the bottom of the tree and work up, spacing the crackers on one level so there was room for the crackers on the next level to nestle attractively above 'em.

Without those instructions, I know only in retrospect, having learned from my mistakes, that that would have been the right way to do it.

Instead, the final result is as illustrated above, a seeming collaboration between Dr. Seuss and an angry toddler. 

My guests will be invited to demolish the tree cracker by cracker. Should be fun.

Happy Holidays!

Karen

Don't Peak Too Soon

Timing matters.  

I got my flu shot on November 20, which turned out to be three or four days after a flu bug worked its way into my unsuspecting system. So, while my upper arm was still sore at the injection site, I felt the first stirrings - the unmistakeable sore throat - of a flu that would ultimately lay me low for two weeks.

I ruminated on the irony of a flu shot taken a week too late and whiled away time on my sick bed watching some not-very-recent movies.

One was Spellbound, a 2002 movie about eight young people competing in the 1999 National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. That was such a long time ago, and the group of young contestants so interesting, that there are a few "where are they now" sites, the most recent from 2010. That site notes that one of the contestants died young, in 2007, although you can still read his blog here. 

Sad. And creepy.

The other movie I watched was Grizzly Man, a 2005 documentary by Werner Herzog built around footage shot by Timothy Treadwell, the forty-something Californian who got himself eaten by a grizzly bear after several years of hanging around with them for a few months each year, taking amazing videos. 

You don't need to watch the footage Timothy shot of himself for very long before your mind strays to the hard-to-shake notion that he was a bit crazy. Or at least delusional. He said he was there on his wilderness sojourns to "protect" the bears, in the same way, I suppose, that a barnyard chicken "protects" the farmer - and the farmer weighs 800 pounds, stands seven feet high on his hind legs and has four-inch-long claws. 

I wondered how Treadwell could be both so accomplished and so like a little kid. He camped alone (except for the last year) in the wilderness of an Alaskan wildlife refuge with bear-proof canisters of meagre provisions, an astonishing high tech tent that may have collapsed during a torrential downpour but did not leak a bit, sophisticated video equipment that he used with great skill and... his teddy bear from when he was a little boy. 

Sad. And creepy.

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While I was sick, I also read a book sent to me by my dear friend Kate about a thirty-six-year-old woman who had also perhaps peaked too soon, but who got the chance after she'd lost her job to pursue her dream of learning to cook at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

The author, Kathleen Flinn, made me think about the fine points of preparing a meal. Her story also cured me of any notion that I might want to go to Cordon Bleu one day.

The way I see it, my chopping technique may not be all that accomplished, but it gets the job done.

Have a great week!

Karen