Christmas Tree

Salem and I put up our terribly tacky tree this weekend. Admittedly, I love it, it's so ugly it's cute. The best part is that it's made of foil, comes in two pieces and is already wired up with lighting.

As a child, I really didn't care for Christmas. I think it was due to the tree. Countless hours of unraveling 3 miles of lights for the 14' real tree we'd put up each year seemed pointless as we watched it slowly die from the dry heat generated by our wood stove. The dry air squeezed every drop of moisture out of that thing. The sagging brittle branches would drop pine needles all over the floor and subsequently get stuck in my socks, hair and fleece pullover - they're sharp little suckers! Sometimes even as late as April or May I'd still get poked by clinging needles in my shoes leftover from the holidays.

Salem, being a kid of course, is obsessed with decorating for Christmas. Not more than 5 minutes after we put up the tree she flew in from around the corner to say, "Well, still no presents under our tree!!"

"Um, you won't see presents under the tree for a while, kid. So exercise some patients please." I said.

Through out the day she continued to remark on the lack of presents; it sorta started to piss me off. She had some friends over and the first thing she said to them was, "Do you like our tree? Yeah... we don't have presents under it yet because mommy hasn't put any there - she's REAL busy."

She woke up this morning and asked, "Did anyone break into the house and steal our tree last night?"

me: "Ummm, no. It's still there..." She pushed her covers back, jumped out of bed and ran to the tree. From there she shouted, "Well! I don't see any presents under the tree yet!"

me: "Nope, you sure don't!" (Truth be told, I have already gotten her some presents but have not wrapped any yet. I'm sorta angry about her being so demanding and impatient. I feel like teaching her a lesson but I'm not sure how to handle it.)