Yes, Jon, this is too long for a respectable blog. That's my way. :-)

I blame Elise for this. Not the baby, the blog. Although the baby is just as cute in real life.

As I was freaking out in Smiths (for reasons I will detail momentarily), she said I should blog it. And for some unknown reason, I thought that sounded like a good idea. Heavens knows, I have extra time...my floors are clean...the laundry is folded...and I don't need any sleep. Why not spend Gabriel's 15 minutes worth of power nap blogging?

Why not? Because apparently not all of my family is addicted to Facebook (won't you be my Fishville neighbor?), but they would all like to get updates on my family and see the latest pictures of the new cutest baby EVAR. So here I go. If Gabe wakes up and I stop midsentence, bear with me...

So the blizzards finally paused long enough on a day other than Sunday for the Alfred’s to venture out into the cold wilderness to cut down a Christmas tree. We bundled up and headed Out There, excited to FINALLY get a tree. Isn’t the wilderness great? Isn’t wildlife FUN? That’s what I was thinking when we crossed the slushy Home Depot parking lot. And when we found a beautiful 6-7 foot noble fir that I think was mispriced, but I won’t mention by how much because until an hour ago I felt bad about it. I was also feeling pretty good about Nature while Jon and I were trying to keep the boys who can walk from bouncing off the walls with Christmas Joy. I was even feeling pretty good about all of God’s creations when Elijah tried to share his seven-year-old enthusiasm for nature with me by telling me there were ants on our beautiful, cheap, wonderfully pine-scented noble fir.

Fast forward to today. Jon was on Gabe duty and I decided to get the lights and garland on our majestic specimen of noble fir-dom so the boys can decorate the rest tonight (and I can rearrange everything after they go to bed. Come on, fellow moms. You know you do this, because if you don’t, there are only decorations on one square foot of tree about three feet from the floor. On the side by the wall).

Now, I LOVE putting lights on the tree. It is my favorite part of decorating the tree. I take hours to do this, placing every light JUST SO. I was hard at work stringing lights, with Ethan the Birthday School Ditcher trailing me, carrying the once neatly looped, now hideously knotted string of Christmas lights for me (insert Christmas Vacation joke about untangling lights…HERE). I was about 1/3 of the way down the tree and I noticed…it wasn’t imaginary ants that Elijah was trying to point out to me…IT WAS SPIDERS, AND LOTS OF THEM. All over my fabulous tree.

If you’re curious, land speed records were set as I frantically distanced myself from my own personal reenactment of Arachnophobia.

I’ll spare you all a blow-by-blow narrative of the rest of the experience by sharing he following bulleted list (that’s for you, Carrie!):

• What was once a pine-scented tree now smells like bug spray…which will probably kill the tree but not the spiders, thus nullifying all of my other efforts to keep the tree from transforming into a giant pile of really good kindling conveniently located next to the gas fire place.

• The can of bug spray was decorated with cute pink flowers. Nothing says “death to nature” like cute pink flowers.

• When I gathered my courage enough to resume the lighting process (WITHOUT those nifty gloves for birthing cows that Elise so thoughtfully suggested), I managed to get the lights AND garland up in 15 minutes. This is less than half the time I usually spend on lights alone.

• True story: as I stood before the tree debating the most efficient method of bug spray application, there was a spider perched defiantly where the star belongs. I could practically hear it taunting me (“Your mother smelt of elderberries…Come back here, so I may taunt you again!”), so I sprayed it first…and got bug spray all over the mirror over the fire place. Nice. It turns out that the “shock and awe” technique of bug spray application only creates more problems.

• This is the first year I haven’t courted disaster by stringing too many light strands together. Looking on the bright side, that’s probably a blessing in disguise, considering bullet number one. We don’t need electrical sparks next to a dry tree coated in flammable bug spray. Next to a gas fire place. Even with our really great renter’s insurance.

• I exercised my Parental Right to Occasionally Make Decisions Without Consulting the Children…and named the tree Peter Parker. Ethan will NOT like this, because I told him he couldn’t name the tree after anyone from Star Trek or Robotech. I’m such a hypocrite.

So that was my lighting experience in a nutshell. I guess all I have to do now is go find the insect repellant so I feel safe letting the boys in the living room with Peter and friends…because you know those villains…they never REALLY die in the vat of caustic chemicals…

PS—in retrospect, Peter wasn’t mispriced…he was marked down because he was damaged. But I’m sure he has a great personality.

PPS—the Carpenters Christmas was, strangely, NOT appropriate background music for putting up Peter’s lights. With my paranoid rushing, I should have looked for A Twisted Sister Christmas, which not only exists…Jon OWNS it.