Thanksgiving is behind is, (barely) and the holiday season is officially ON.
My first chore: staging the various components of the family talisman, the Clanton Tannenbaum. It never goes without a hitch, and so, may I present my tribute to this year's tree:
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Thy leaves are so unchanging;
But flattened here, and scrunched-up there--
They do need re-arranging.
O Christmas tree, thou mockest me,
With half thy boughs be-lighted.
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
With what plastic malady be blighted?
The last year spent in attic's sleep,
Awaken, o ye plastic lumber;
Could your Summer's stay in temps of Kelvin
This season prove a colossal blunder?
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
Frustration do you bring me;
For every year this plastic shrub
Becomes a polyvinyl meany.
Each burned out light,
Each Scotch-taped bell,
No one alive challenges me as well...
O Christmas tree, O Christmas tree,
At the curb this year you'll be hanging.
(apologies to Ernst Anschuzt and Melchior Franck