Defrocking

Ah yes, it's that time of year again now too -time to untrim and take apart the Christmas tree.

Mandy had told me Sunday evening her plans this week, on her days off, included that one of those days she would be taking the ornaments and trimmings off the tree, taking the tree apart, stashing the tree stand, branches and that stuff in the box from whence it came as well as packing up the decorations from the tree too.

She had Monday off and also yesterday (Wednesday) but guess what was still standing, completely trimmed -lights, decorations, garland -you name it -today?

If you guessed the tree, you would be correct with that answer.

Earlier this evening (actually, late afternoon) as I was taking the biscuits I made to go with our supper (Sausage gravy over biscuits -nothing like a good breakfast item for the supper table, ya know), she announced to me she was going out to our church to do the weekly cleaning she does for the congregation.

Okay, fine but couldn't you eat first, while everything is still hot out of the oven, just off the stove?

Nope! She had to go get the church cleaned now as for her, the time was just right to do that.

About an hour later, she calls to tell me her brother just called her and asked her if she would be able to drive the 42 miles it is between where we live and where the office of the company he drives for is located and he needed someone to venture up there and pick up his paycheck for this week.

So he had roped her into doing the deed for him today.

And, because that will take her a considerable amount of time and she will then after picking up said check, have to connect up with her brother between 6:30 and 7 p.m. at Walmart to give him his check, she then asked if Katie and I would be so kind as to begin the job of defrocking the darned tree so she could finish it when she comes home.

Kate and I got all the ornaments off, the garland next, then the lights all onwound from the tree and rolled up into a nice ball for storage purposes. And we also removed all the branches to the tree and all that stuff is now laying out on the dining room table for her to finish putting it in the crates or totes she stores this stuff in.

She's never been one who liked dealing with the final cleanup after the Chrismas holidays and always tended to leave that job to dumb old fools -like me.

Except for the one year when I was swamped with work all through January and February -had no time off, or not enough time available to take down the trimming and the tree. I was putting in 70-80 hours a week during both those months and by March, it still hadn't let up much on m work front to do this chore of defrocking the tree. April came and my older daughter offered her little sister $20 to take it down and she refused that.

And that's when I got ticked off and said well, if it's too difficult for her to take it down for $20, then I sure as hell am not doing it for free and announced too that as far as I was concerned the tree could just stay up there the entire year then for all I cared. (Obviously, this was an artifical tree we were dealing with too, ya know.

My older grandson was small at that time -probably 3, maybe 4 years old -but whatever age he was, he was was smart enough to realize Gram still had her Christmas Tree up and it sure wasn't still Christmas. So one day, he asked his mother how come Grammy J still has a Christmas Tree up and doesn't she know Christmas has passed, a long time ago.

His mother just told him it's your grandmother and she's just a little bit loopy sometimes so just ignore it and pretend you don't see anything strange or out-of-place there.

I thought that was pretty good advice to give the kid, don'tt you?

And the nice thing is by keeping the tree up all year 'round, it saved me at least 2-3 hoursof time by not having to put the tree up again the next year!

My version of efficiciency.