the bank hired people to come in and put up our xmas tree. these tree decorators hardly seem qualified; one of them is about eleven. i'm not saying that children shouldn't be allowed to put up trees; i'm just saying i have to wonder how much this kid is getting paid. i would have enjoyed putting up the tree, i think. i would have definitely enjoyed it for about the first ten minutes, and that would have been reflected in the great attention to detail in the arrangement of the lights. i have a feeling i may have lost that enjoyment when it came time to put on the ornaments, which i would have no doubt tossed on in a rather haphazard fashion, my main thought being, "why am i not done with this yet?" then, with placing the angel atop the tree, i would have decided that lugging out a ladder simply wasn't worth it, and thus the angel would have ended up stuck sideways on one of the lower branches. near the back.

when i was a kid, i loved putting the tree up. too bad nobody would let me. everything had to be done perfectly, and clearly, i was not the right candidate. when my sister and i were finally granted permission to assemble and decorate the old $15 kmart tree, i had completely lost interest. i think that year i concentrated on my new hobby, which involved systematically going through all of my mother's boxes of puzzles, some of them with over 500 pieces, and taking just one of the the middle pieces from each set and promptly flushing it. that's how i derived my holiday joy, invoking the true christmas spirit by waiting for the magical moment when, after several days of hard work, my mother would realize that she was just one lousy, stinking piece short of having a one and a half square foot portrait of paula abdul. in puzzle form.

for the most part, i'm kidding. i like to make myself out to be a lazy, mean-spirited slob simply because lazy and mean-spirited is funnier than diligent and caring. really, i'm a hard working individual with clear cut goals and a heart of gold. small children and animals just love me.