For want of a branch.

I'm writing this on Saturday evening, and I'm a bit tired. Had to do some payin' work this morning, but the afternoon was all Christmas Christmas Christmas! 

It went pretty well, if I do say so myself, and I do, because by tradition nobody helps me, unless you count looking for flaws afterward. Since I refuse to get up on the porch roof and run strips of lights along the gutters, and since I paid a fortune to have the gutters fixed this year and I'm not touching them, the second floor of Casa Key gets illuminated by lighted figures in the windows. They all have separate timers, and synching them is impossible, so every year I see them come on at different times, and I don't give a darn anymore. When they're all lit up they look great.

The porch did not get done yet, because it rained most of the day. That's on the list for tomorrow.

Inside I put up the tree, and there was the real problem. Of course there was a problem! Have I ever written a post that went "Everything was great, the end"? What fun is that?

Here's the thing: I'm missing a branch.

When we moved into the house, with its forced-air heat, we decided to change tradition and go with a fake tree. It gets so dry in here during the cold months that the static electricity damn near gives my wife a pompadour. We thought a live tree would drop all its needles in a week and burst into flame. 

 I grew up with a fake tree -- the same one for decades -- so I'm used to them. For a couple of years the Mrs. and I used one from Walmart, which was about as high-quality a Chinese artifact as you might expect. Then we invested in one from Christmas in America, proudly made in a factory in Newburgh, New York, right here in the lower Hudson Valley. We've enjoyed it for quite a few Christmases now.

It's a pretty realistic thing, seven feet tall and dark green. It has a top section that's one piece, but the middle and lower sections are constructed of layers of individual branches. And somehow, since last year, I managed to lose one of the upper branches.

How could this happen? 

I've looked everywhere for it but found no sign. It vanished from the box in the cellar somehow, just as my spare car key, another set of keys, and my glasses just vanished from the cellar. That's where all these things were last seen. I know it's not mice, because A) mice have no interest in these things and B) my wife is scared of mice and has the world's greatest mouse radar. If we had a mouse in here someplace she'd know long before the dogs did.

"It's The Borrowers," I told her, "only stupid. We have the world's stupidest borrowers."

Well, I turned the hole in the tree toward the wall, but I know it's there. The branch may yet appear in one of the ornament boxes, but I have no memory of tossing the loose branch in there. That's not where it belongs. I tend to take things down quickly in January, but I don't just chuck things into random boxes.

It's bad enough when I get critiqued by others for my decorating; it's worse when I know there's a flaw and I can't do anything about it.

No point in trying to buy a spare branch from Christmas in America, which was driven out of business in 2012. Probably by those damn cheap fake trees from China. 

If the branch doesn't turn up this year, I'll probably have to buy a new tree for next year. It will probably be very difficult to get one made in America. 

Grumble, grumble.

And I hated The Borrowers. Couldn't even finish the book.

Bah.

Merry Christmas.