It was a rough week. Full of fun, no doubt, but sprinkled with roughness. I fell off my bike. Ouch. All stove up, with a hitch in my get-a-long.
The car went into the shop and the bill was twice what I thought it would be.
Lois Lane started biting her tail again and had to go back into the cone of shame.
Then, the Christmas tree fell down.
I have over 300 ornaments for my Christmas tree, not that I use all of them every year, or put them all on one tree, but I have a lot of ornaments. Each one must be turned exactly in the right direction, and hang on the exactly perfect branch. I can spend a week arranging each ornament in the perfect spot, and then tweak it every day until around 10:30pm on December 24th. The tree topper itself is always my main creative outlet for the year. Sometimes it consists of dried flowers I’ve collected from the past 12 months, other times it’s a Southern theme with dried cotton bolls and okra pods. The angel also takes a turn from year to year with the antique glass spire.
This is one of my favorite trees from several years ago. Pheasant feathers, dried okra pods and flowers were at the top that year. I didn’t even have a chance to take a photo of this year’s tree before the great fall.
I had just completed spraying palmetto fronds and magnolia leaves a beautiful shimmery silver and placing them on the top of the tree, and it was fabulous, if I say so myself.
Perfection.
Beauty.
And then, at exactly 10:41pm on Tuesday night, I looked up, and saw the 10foot tall tree slowly coming toward me. At first, I thought I would try to catch it, then I saw that the ceiling fan may be in it’s line of fire. Being all stove up from the bicycle wreck, all I could do was utter a very unladylike, and uncharacteristic, “OH CRAP!” My husband, shocked at my vulgarity, looked over at me in horror, and completely missed the incoming bombardment as the tree landed perfectly on top of the coffee table which sat in between the two of us.
Shocked, we stared at each other, until a sound unlike I’ve ever heard before came out of somewhere deep inside of me. More than a whimper, but less than a scream. I sat motionless, while Sweetie Pie jumped into action mopping up the flood of water and scooping up the broken glass.
“I’m sick! I’m sick!” I said over and over. Hubby kept moving and sweeping and mopping. He said, “I’ll take a picture because I know you’ll want to blog about this.” “NO!” I said, “I don’t ever want to think about this again! It’s unspeakable and I’ll never want to think about it!” (until today).
Thankfully, I never just “hang” the ornaments on the branches, but I wrap each hook around the branches for security. Therefore, very few ornaments actually fell off the tree, but the ones in the front of the tree smashed against the coffee table – and of course, I had hung the most precious and favorites in . . . the front.
Antique ornaments from my husband’s sweet Grandmother and her mother from Ireland – poof! Gone. Shards of glass. This pink one was safe.
I was greatly relieved and amazed to see this 9-11 ornament was okay.
All the lights were cattywompus and it all had to be completely redone. But guess what? It ended up looking better than before. Most of my favorites are survivors, so not all is lost.
Of course, my son’s favorite car survived, because it’s really plastic and cost $2 at Big Lots.
In 21 years, it had to happen sometime.
This one is indestructible, thank goodness.
And here’s the tree, reconstructed and redecorated ready to go. Not a great photo, but you can see the silver magnolia leaves at the top, and plenty of ornaments still . . . hanging in there!
And now, I’ll have a peaceful weekend. I’m quite sure of it.