2024, Family, holidays, home, Uncategorized

I Wouldn’t Have Bet Any Money

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Sometimes I surprise even myself.  I would have thought that I would go to my grave as a “real” tree person.  There have been real Christmas trees every year of my life, even the two years living in a teeny apartment (we had a very small table top tree that we placed on the piano).  For many years, including up until YA was in high school, the tree was chopped down at one of the many tree farms around the Twin Cities then dragged back to the house atop the car.  One year I borrowed a friends pick-up truck; that made it easy – just tossed the tree into the bed of the truck and off we went.  Once YA didn’t want to make a day-long ordeal of getting a tree, we moved to the two-minute-drive-to-Bachmans selection process.

YA has been talking about an artificial tree for a couple of years now.  She doesn’t like getting sap on her hands and she really doesn’t like the needles on the floor.  Since we usually have the tree up from the day after Thanksgiving until New Years, there are always needles.  Every time she mentioned these problems, I completely blew her off.  Until last year.

For many years Bachmans offered a nice discount to fresh trees on Black Friday.  This ended during pandemic, so my wallet had felt that pinch already.  Then last year, when we trundled down to see the trees, the sticker shock just about knocked me off my feet.  And the selection was pretty sparse as well.  It was do bad in fact, that we were actually about to leave to go look for a Boy Scout or Church lot.  We found the white pines outside on the lot – sitting on their own.  I love white pine but YA does not; they are harder to decorate as they are so thick and the branches are not strong.  But the pricing was much better, so we chose one and headed home.

I spent months thinking about YAs arguments in favor of an artificial tree and was finally swayed to “think about it” when she offered to cover at least half of the cost.  I had seen the space allotted to artificial trees at Gertens.  It was huge, so in October, when we saw the first holiday sale, we headed on over.  Honestly I didn’t think this was going to end well.  I figured we wander around for about 20 minutes, have a fight and then go home. 

I’ve always had lights that fade on and off; I was expecting to be sad that I was losing this option with a fake tree.  YA wanted a tree that looked real.  I was worried about the whole “fluffing” thing that I’ve heard people talk about.  YA was worried about plugging everything in.

Then we met Bonnie.  She works the artificial tree lot at Gertens and boy, is she good at her job.  She knew EVERYTHING about all the trees but was very good at parsing out her knowledge as you asked and didn’t overwhelm us.  We learned quite a bit.  First off, many of the trees have rubber tips, so they look quite authentic (just the tips though, the inside branches are paper needles, otherwise the tree would weigh a ton).  Many trees now have power poles; you don’t have to mess with plugs.  You attach each section and the tree figures it out.  AND… although when you look at the trees sitting on display, they all have either white lights or multi-colored lights, it turns out that most trees these days have multiple options.  The tree that we liked has six setting.  None of them are fade on/fade off, but there are three twinkle settings. 

YA wanted one particular tree a lot – enough that she decided she could cover even more than half of the cost.  So despite my expectations that we wouldn’t find anything we both liked, we ended up coming home with my first artificial tree.  It takes about 8 minutes to put up, from start to finish.  I don’t have to put on the lights, we don’t have to water it.  Six settings of lights, as I mentioned.  And I think it’s lovely. 

We had friends over last night to trim the tree and it was easy to decorate and the branches are all strong enough to even the heaviest of our ornaments (a little torito from Peru).  I’m really happy with the new tree.  Guess you can teach old dogs new tricks every now and then.

Have you ever surprised yourself by changing your mind?

22 thoughts on “I Wouldn’t Have Bet Any Money”

  3. Oh, I completely forgot. There’s also a remote control so that you can change the light settings and turn the lights on/off without getting anywhere near the tree!

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  4. What do the Fur Babies think of it, VS?

    It seems like I change my mind regularly on little stuff, and I can think of one big one. I used to be kind of an anti-vax person. That changed with Covid. I don’t get everything my dr. says is possible, but I do get the ones where my not getting them could harm others.

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    1. Guinevere has never given one fig about any tree we’ve ever had. She doesn’t sniff, she doesn’t try to get the ornaments on the little branches. Nothing. When Nimue was younger, we had issues with her trying to bat the ornaments off and even climbing in the tree for the first few years of her life. Now that she’s older and more sedate, she not really interested in the tree anymore.

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  5. I’ve always felt really bad about cutting trees down to use for a month or so, then just throw away like garbage. Yes, I know they were grown for that purpose, but still… I’m too firm a believer in the sentience of trees, and in reforestation (especially white pine), so I’ve had artificial trees for decades. The one I have now has white lights and plugs for each section. No flashing or twinkling or strobing either. That would make me tired. Just nice white lights. I like it.

    I surprised myself when I decided not to move to the Duluth, Two Harbors, or Grand Marais areas. I’m enjoying life in Northfield too much right now. I can come up here anytime I want now, and I’m guaranteed at least one week every two months. I’m saying that’s good enough. I’ve always, always wanted to buy a house up here, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m good where I am for the time being. Not that this area doesn’t call to me. It certainly does, and I can’t describe the feeling I get when I see the big lake as I come over the hill on I35. It just fills my heart. Living without a mortgage is pretty special though- makes life easier. And having new friends in Northfield is pretty sweet!

    I think I’ve been anonymized. I only have my phone with me right now and WP isn’t happy with me.
    Krista

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  6. We have had no tree for the past couple of years. We have spent Christmas at our son’s place and I didn’t want to go away for the week leaving the cat alone with the tree. We always get a live tree, many becausevI don’t want an artificial one sitting in the basement collecting dust. It is tremendously dusty out here. I will bring out the German candle holders and gnomes

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  7. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    Well, there was that decision not to stay with my first marriage. I did not see that coming many years ago. But I am really glad I made that decision. I would have been unhappy had I stayed in the situation. So yes I have changed my mind in ways that surprised me a lot. The other one was starting my own private practice. That was never a goal or something I wanted, and one day, voila, there it was and it worked. Changing my mind about a purchase is easier. Then you just take the item back and it is over. A divorce is so much more complicated.

    I used to love my Christmas tree. But this year we are not putting one up at all and I find I just do not care that much. I will put up some things I enjoy. Years ago after discovering I am allergic to pine trees, I stopped buying fresh trees because they were contributing to sinus infections. I sure did love those trees, though.

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  8. I changed my mind about eating something I swore I would never eat. We have become heavily into bean cookery as well as Spanish food. I found a recipe for Fabada Asturiana, a Spanish pork and bean stew. It has white beans, pork hock, pancetta, and Spanish chorizo, as well as morcilla, or blood sausage. I ordered morcilla. It comes in 5 inch long, 1.5 inch thick links, and I am going to put them in the stew. My coworkers are appalled, except for one who was raised in Mexico and who loves blood sausage. We are making the stew in the next couple if weeks.

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