We Just Can't Have Nice Things

We tried. We wanted to have a nice Christmas tree this year. We've always had a beautifully decorated tree. Always. Until last year. It was Emmie's first Christmas and she was a tiny little peanut of a kitten. When we put up our tree, she immediately climbed in to play and sit in the branches. No big deal. She was too little to knock the tree down, so we let her have her way, but fearing electric lights would zap her and our ornaments would be ruined, we lived with a plain old artificial tree. Sad, but necessary.

This year, with Emmie being a well-behaved, no-longer-a-kitten (cough cough) kind of cat, we thought we could have a pretty tree again. We bought a new artificial tree (because we pitched our old one when it began losing more needles than a real tree and I don't want to talk about the fact that our new one does the same frigging thing) and put it up. Emmie climbed at first, but then left it alone. The next night, we added lights - all blue this year (not nearly as pretty as I'd hoped, but whatever) and Emmie climbed and played in the branches. We left it that way for a few days, then I was ready to try some ornaments.

I figured I'd start with the cross-stitched ornaments lovingly made over the years by my mother and happily hung them on the branches. They're so beautiful! (And look, Mom, almost enough to do a tree with just these ornaments! Hope you're working on more for this year. Hop to it!)


Look at one up close. Pretty nice, huh?

Emmie played in the branches as I hung the ornaments, but when I took a break, so did she. She went into the kitchen for a few minutes. Then the sneaky little $&@! peeked into the living room, went back for a running start and FLEW across the room toward the tree. She jumped up and whacked off two ornaments in one smooth motion. Crap. Within five minutes, there were seven or eight ornaments on the floor. We just can't have nice things.

M. came downstairs, looked at me with tremedous sadness in his eyes, and proceeded to take all of the ornaments off the tree. Can't do it this year.

We decided to leave the tree up with just the lights. An attempt at being festive, at least. Then, this morning, I came down to see this:

She had pulled out some of the branches and pulled the lights down from the top of the tree. After telling her what a bad girl she was, I tried to put things back together. Then this happened:

Guess I should just give it up.

Let's look at some balls, shall we?

Eleven 1/2 done, a little more than that to go. Must knit more balls.