Accomplishments

James and I built a compost bin in the backyard this afternoon, and I did not teach him any new words!

Also, we had our friend Julia over without being in a state of maximum disarray.  The last several times she's come by, we've either had a newborn or some other minor crisis, most notably the Christmas Tree Incident.  Luckily for us, if not for her, she is just the kind of person you want to have around in such a situation.

I will now celebrate Julia by recounting the Christmas Tree Incident in full:

In 2003, we put off buying a Christmas tree until the last minute because we were not feeling festive.  By the time we got around to it (7 PM on December 23), the only place with any trees for sale in our neighborhood was a vacant lot by the Metro tracks.  We pulled in and saw three trees remaining.  One was about two feet tall.  The second was nine feet.  The third, we thought, was just right.  The guy running the lot said, "I think this one is a kind of blue spruce.  It's a nice tree.  A little pointy."  We thought to ourselves, "well, of course it's pointy; it's a Christmas tree," but were unconcerned  He put it in a plastic sleeve and helped us tie it onto our car.

We got home and discovered that "pointy" is sales patter for "its razor-sharp needles will instantly raise welts on any bare skin that brushes against them."  Also, we discovered after several rounds with the tree stand that the tree suffered from a permanent bend to the left.  

At this point we dragged the tree back into our front hall, studied our mangled forearms, and had a lively debate about chucking the thing over the fence into the neighbor's yard.  Just as one of us opened the door to toss the tree onto the lawn to await our decision, Julia showed up and narrowly missed being hit by a flying spruce. 

We had forgotten until that moment that she was coming over for dinner.  

Julia, completely unfazed by being greeted at the door by two shouting people with a dangerous object in hand, went into the kitchen, put on two oven mitts, and grabbed the top of the tree.  Dave, in a heavy jacket and work gloves, screwed the tree into the tree stand while I made us all some dinner.

The tree was much easier to take down than it had been to put up, since all the needles fell off at 10 AM on Christmas morning.  The vacuum cleaner took the brunt of their razor-sharpness that time.