Yes, That Is EXACTLY What You Think It Is...

Of course I had a Christmas tree in my bathtub today, doesn't everyone?

I actually think it improved the look of that bathroom, which as you can see I haven't gotten around to repainting/tiling/everything else yet.

The tree is in the bathtub because I've learned the hard way that Christmas trees require a good hosing out before being allowed to enter the living room--the amounts of mud, gravel, straw, sticks and other road grunge I've hosed out of the things over the years would consitute a small landfill.  Not to mention *ahem* living things, mainly spiders.  Yeah, I know, there is a cute little tradition that spiders in your holiday tree are 'good luck'.  Well, they can go bring their good fortune to someone not so deadly sensitive to spider bites as I, thank you.  I'll stick with four leaf clovers and finding pennies on the sidewalk.  I'm just glad that there were no freeze-dried critters in there that returned to life like zombie TV dinners.

Back to the Christmas tree in the bathtub.

Two nights ago when we went Christmas tree hunting we'd had a good snow followed by several days of subfreezing temps, so every tree lot we looked at had wonderful frozen tannenbaum sarcophagi stacked up like hard, green cigars.  It was a balmy 9 degrees, so there was no unwinding the string and checking for a good tree this year, nosiree.  It was grab a likely frozen candidate, drag that conifer entombed in permafrost back home and hope for the best.  This one was a triangular shape that steadfastly refused to thaw for an entire day.

So today when it was at it's warmest--around 27 degrees--and there was absolutely no hope of running the garden hose without risking burst pipes and a really ice encrusted tree, we opted for the next best thing--drag the tree into the bathtub and hose it out there.

I fully expected this entire safari to evolve into a typical event for us involving several cascading mini-disasters, all of which would be disgustingly ridiculous and humiliating.  To my surprise everything went smoothly though, and tonight the tree is ensconced in the living room, slowly thawing out and unfurling the rest of the way.

I fully expect the other shoe to drop and something dumb to happen, this is too good an opportunity for fate to pass up.