It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

This weekend we put up the Christmas tree.

sigh.

I am sooo not feeling it this year. If it weren't for the Kiddo, I wouldn't have bothered with it. But I don't want him to remember his last Christmas before college as "the one without a tree and also the one with the really bitchy stepmother". So I made Captain Carl drag the damn thing out of the garage and I set about clearing the the furniture from the front window and pulling all the fucking ornaments from the very back of the closet and damn it! why did I put all this fucking shit in front of the Christmas decorations?? Who needs three extra comforters and five suitcases anyway???

And right about then Renty walked in with a big box and an even bigger grin. Turns out he had a crap ton of his own ornaments and garland and he bought the whole thing at Sam's and it's called "Christmas in a Box" or "A zillion tiny glass ornaments that will take you forever to put up on the tree Box" or something like that. Renty was super excited and looked about 8 years old when he told me he'd love to help us decorate the tree.

well shit!

Let me explain something before I go any further with this story. I have major control issues when it comes to the Christmas tree. I like all the ornaments to be just so and that angel on top better be fucking straight as an arrow or there will be hell to pay. In short, it's perfect or it's not done. I relented a bit last year when, in exchange for their help, I agreed to keep my hands off of the ornaments that Captain Carl and the Kiddo placed on the tree. And I kept my word, even though there were about 15 ornaments that were clearly too close to other ornaments and there was a huge gap near the bottom where no one hung anything and honestly, who hangs two identical angels right next to each other???

Fast forward to today and our lives are very different than they were last year. We've had almost a full year of renters in the house and I've had to let a lot of things go so that I wouldn't drive myself and my family crazy. As I stared at Renty's face, I knew right then that the Christmas tree was going to be another on of those things. I mean, the guy's ex-wife just got remarried (I didn't tell y'all about that...it was a surprise to him and I felt kind of bad blogging about his misfortune), he was alone on Thanksgiving and will be alone again on Christmas. There was no way I was gonna be that big of an asshole and tell him "thanks but no thanks".

So Renty, Captain Carl and myself spent an hour decorating the tree. The Kiddo was at a band function, so it was just the three of us. I even used Renty's tree skirt, which was a huge deal because my tree skirt is the shit. We started drinking about half way through the process and the Captain was blaring Christmas music and Renty was so happy that he looked like he could have burst apart into tiny divorced 40-year old man bits at any moment.

And guess what, y'all? It was really fun. And my tree looks great and I didn't move any of the ornaments and Renty watched Christmas Vacation with us afterwards and we all agreed to make gingerbread houses next weekend when his kids are here and I know that will be awesome too.

Okay, so I moved one ornament. Big deal. It was one of the vintage ones my dead Grandma gave me and the Captain put it on the back of the tree and those always go on the front. So that didn't count.

Okay, I moved three ornaments. Don't judge me.

Fine. I moved four. But that's all. And I totally did it when they weren't looking. I'm like the stealth bomber of tree decorating.