Day 247

 

Day 247, self quarantine:

Monday, November 16, 2020

That’s a pic of my living room this morning.  

Notice the lack of the Christmas tree I intended to put up yesterday?

Yeah.

So right after I finished writing my post yesterday morning, I decided to open the box that held the Christmas tree and set it up myself while Gary was still sleeping.

Did you ever see the episode of the Dick Van Dyke show where Laura opened a package meant for Rob she shouldn’t have?  And it was a blow up boat that inflated to full size as soon as she opened the box, scaring the hell out of her?

That was me and that freaking tree yesterday.

The minute I pulled it from the box...and it was heavy as fuck...and I cut the binding cord, the branches sprung out and almost knocked me over.

Our living room is twelve feet wide.

The tree was almost six feet wide.

And seven and a half feet tall.

I immediately started to cry.

I mean, it was ridiculous.  It was a monstrous mountain of fake tree.  It took up half the house and blocked out all the light coming from the back door.  There was no way we could keep it. I started hyperventilating about having to return it, especially less than 24 hours after reading Gary the riot act about the virus and going to stores.  I had no idea how I was even going to fit it back in the box.

Also, Gary doesn’t do mornings.  When he saw that debacle before he even had coffee, we weren’t going to have a good start to the day.

I dried my eyes and tried to think of an alternative spot.  Could I move it all the way to the left and smoosh it up against the end glass panel of the back door?

I got on my hands and knees and tried to drag it by its base and knocked over half the stuff on the coffee table.

I burst into a fresh round of tears.

It was never going to work.

And of course that’s right when Gary decided to wake up and come downstairs for coffee.

I knew he’d be angry at me just for opening the box myself.  Oh, relax, he’s not macho, it’s because I’m a klutz with a bad back and wonky shoulder and the last place either of us wants to go during a pandemic is the emergency room.  He worries about me and is always begging me to “let him do it.”

As expected, we had some words.

Gary said he hated fake trees and never should have agreed to one.

I wanted to say, “It was your idea to buy this King Kong tree!  I looked at one half the size!”

But I didn’t.

The tree did not look that big in the pic online and we didn’t measure.

And what’s the point of arguing?  I’m stuck with him in quarantine. Neither one of us can go anywhere and it was my day off.

I wanted to spend the day happy, playing our traditional Beatles Christmas records and trimming a tree.

Not crying and arguing.

So instead of playing a childish blame game, I said, “Oh my god, this is my worst nightmare, it took us fifty years but we’ve turned into our parents at the holidays.”

Because our parents and holidays = arguments.

Horrible.

Usually alcohol was involved.

We swore as kids dating we would never, ever be like them, and that we’d make our own kids’ holidays like something at Disneyland.

And we did.  And still do.

Welp, Disneyland before we learned the truth about Walt, anyway.

And that was all it took. Gary stopped yelling and so did I.

But I was still all teary eyed.

“Like 2020 isn’t horrible enough with no kids and no holidays,” I sobbed. “Now it’s the attack of the killer Christmas trees.”

“If we were only going to keep it up a couple weeks, I could live with it,” Gary said.  “But I can’t even get out back to feed the birds. And we just cleaned up all the records. Forget about playing records, I can’t even fit back there. And you want to leave it up until the kids can visit when in 2021?”

“It seemed like a great idea at the time,” I said miserably.

“Don’t they make smaller ones?” Gary asked.

I looked up hopefully.

“Yes!  That’s what I envisioned!  They’re called pencil trees - not even two feet wide but seven feet tall. Pottery Barn has them but I’m sure I can find one anywhere.”

But I want the pencil tree from Pottery Barn.

“Okay, order one and we’ll take this one back.  Hopefully they do no contact returns.”

They do.

So the new tree will be here by next Monday, it’s only twenty inches wide at the base, which is exactly the width of the Edison victrola in the photo I intend to put it in front of and it won’t keep us from seeing our records or our birds.

Or playing our Edison. We have 78 rpm records from 1920s we still listen to, especially at Christmas.

Disaster diverted.

We’re both pretty emotional right now though.

So we talked things out throughout the day and by the time we went to bed we were making all kinds of giant fake tree jokes and now that we both know how much we’re both hurting we’re going to be extra tender and considerate with each other so everything worked out in the end.

It’s crazy, though, how it took a pandemic to change our decades long relationship.  We talk about everything now.

Yikes.  We’re normal, huh.

Okay, today I gotta tell Gary I saw a floor lamp in the CB2 catalogue “we” have to have.

As you know, the old me would have just ordered it and told Gary someone gave me a gift certificate.

Not anymore.

I know, right?

Anyway, have you noticed my tremendous restraint in not talking about Donald today?

That’s because he’s irrelevant.

He does not exist in my world anymore.

So that’s it for today.  I have kind of a crunchy work week with deadlines and a review of the case list again crunch crunch but I will ace it and I’m really looking forward to the four day Thanksgiving holiday next week.

And Thanksgiving dinner!

Gary’s menu is INSANE.

Wait for the miniseries.

Pics will follow, naturally.

Happy Monday!