1. This baby
2. This clip from NPR’s “Fresh Air” of Terry Gross interviewing Maurice Sendak, illustrated by Christopher Niemann. (Thanks, Mel.)
3. My Christmas tree is gone.
I was lazy, ok? I put it in the neighbor’s dumpster. It’s too late to take it to the tree lots (they stopped accepting Christmas tress on the 15th—but I think I did this on like the 14th). And the trash company just left the tree there, where it would stare at me guilt-inducingly every time I’d go to my car. (In fairness, it’s 8 feet tall and 4 feet wide and was rather hovering over the dumpster, so it may have just fallen out when they went to empty the dumpster. Or they chose not to take it. Whatever. It’s probably illegal to put it in there.)
So, yeah, guilt. I didn’t want the residents next door to get in trouble or feel responsible to take care of it.
A big tree cutting/removal truck was in our alley the other day. I approached one of the workers, who asked if they were blocking me in.
“No,” I said. “I have a weird question. There’s this Christmas tree here … And it’s been here for a while … ” (Total lie! Just me not taking responsibility for it.) “And I was just wondering.”
“Oh, yeah. We can take it,” he said.
“Oh hurray! Thank you so much!”
PHEW!
BUT. They didn’t take it. Maybe they forgot it. Maybe they were expecting some payment that I never offered. Whatever. The fucker was still there. And so was my guilt.
So then I was trying to figure out what to do with this monstrosity of a tree. Yesterday I finally just settled on tying it to my car and taking it to this mulch place, where a very nice and helpful lady told me they’d accept it at no cost.
Only I was by myself. And didn’t think I could secure it to the roof of my car by myself. (Did I mention it was hella dead and shed needles allllll over the place so I didn’t want to put it in my trunk, besides the more basic problem of its shear size that wouldn’t allow it to fit./? (—Not really sure which punctuation is appropriate for this terribly written sentence.))
But today, this glorious day, when I came home from work, the tree was gone. No idea where. But I’m positively gleeful!