We Grinched This Morning

Yes, we did.  We grinched very early this morning.  The Mister and I were like children on Christmas day.   We could hardly wait to get up and get at it.  But rather than wanting to see what Santa brought, we had destruction on our minds.  It was time for it all to go bye-bye.  Back into boxes.  Back to the basement.  Tucked away until next year.

The fairy lights, the singing animals, the reds, the greens, the gold, the glitter.  All of it needed to go away.  As fast as we could make it so. 

And, I might add, this morning was not the earliest Grinch in our history.  There were Christmas afternoons when the sounds of brittle pine needles hitting the floor were louder than the children. The tree obviously presented a fire hazard and had to go. The tree was also on my nerves, which may have had more to do with its early demise than the fire thing.

There was, if I recall, a mixture of both pride and shame for being the first family on the street to ditch the tree.  And it was there for all to see.  Straggly, pitiful, discarded.  Sitting by the curb, waiting for pick-up by the recycling people. A bit like a horse rode hard and put away wet. A sad sight indeed.

I hope you aren’t waiting for me to tell you that I went back to that curb, dragged the poor thing back inside and put some ornaments on its branches.  That didn’t happen.  What happened was that others quickly followed suit.   Hard-rode trees now littered the street as we let out a joyous “Whew” and wished each other Happy New Year, just as the Mister and I do right now.