Adventures in tree decorating

The plan was perfect. Pick up the tree on Saturday. Get it in the stand and let the branches drop a bit before putting on the lights on Sunday. Save the ornaments for the boys to do together when Sam returned from his mother's and grandmother's Sunday night.

Only the tree appeared to have different plans last weekend.

First came the adventure with the tree purchase. We had received a direct mail coupon for $5 off any Christmas-related purchase over $50 at Lamberts in Sandwich, where they also were donating a bit of the tree proceeds to Sandwich Youth Soccer.

Only Lamberts would not honor the coupon, because the tree's price was $49. After tax it was $51.45, but they refused to take the $5 off. Bah. Humbug. After a bit of a testy conversation, we departed with the tree (but left behind the extra bow Brandy was going to purchase, too), because the kids would not have understood us standing on principle and leaving the tree behind. We simply vowed never to shop at Lamberts again.

Later, Brandy and went on a Sunday date, primarily just to spend time together, but also to finish up a little Christmas shopping. As we were driving down Route 132 in Hyannis, a black cat darted across the road, at about the only time on a Sunday afternoon in the height of Christmas shopping season when it could without being hit.

"Lucky cat!" I said.

"Well, hopefully it won't be unlucky for us," Brandy commented.

Moments later, we pulled into the mall parking lot, and found a space almost as soon as we arrived.

"Maybe it really was a lucky cat," I remarked as we pulled into our pot behind Best Buy. "Although the day is still young."

Later, as I was stringing up the lights, the tree decided it was time to take a nap. As it slowly fell away from me, I did manage to snag just enough of a bough to keep it upright. Luck reigned again, as we shifted it and then turned the screws in the stand a little bit tighter.

The rest of the night went without a hitch. Brandy parsed out the most fragile ornaments to keep them out of the hands of slippery little fingers, and let the boys go nuts hanging the rest (you can see their ration behind Sam and Mason in this photo). I fired away with the camera, of course. Brandy offered me a few ornaments to hang myself, but I declined. The boys were having so much fun (and were equally serious about it at times), I just enjoyed watching. They were done in about 20 minutes.

Flash forward to 6:30 a.m. the next morning.

"Sean?"

"Huh?" I murmered, coming out of a deep sleep, faintly aware of some distant noise.

"I think the tree just fell again," Brandy said, gathering herself to go have a look.

"Again?" I asked while bolting upright, as if the question might reverse reality.

Sure enough, we arrived downstairs to find the tree was on its side on the tiled entryway adjacent to our living room. Miraculously, only a couple of ornaments had shattered. Brandy had hung most of the fragile ones near the top of the tree, and many had managed to stay in place.

So we righted the tree, adjusted it in its stand again, wiggled it a few times to see if it had a propensity to lean over again, and all seemed well.

We'll never know whether it was our darling black cat, Pearl, who had somehow rustled the tree, or the jinx of the black cat darting across our path on Route 132 the previous day finally catching up with us. We just hope that's the end of the Christmas tree adventures.