I took down the Christmas tree today. This morning, I removed all the ornaments and lights, packed them up, and stored them in the basement til next year. I decided to wait a bit, though, before actually getting the tree out of the house.
We had a beautiful tree this year. It was somewhere between 10-11 feet tall and was easilty the biggest we've ever had. Despite its size, we didn't have any trouble getting it up on the van, driving it home, bringing it into the house, or putting it in the stand. In fact, for the past 4 weeks, the tree hasn't given us any problems at all. It's been a great tree.
After putting it off for most of the day, it was time to finally get the tree outside. Even though I watered the tree more than ever this year (that means I watered it all of two times), it had gotten incredibly dry. As Jay helped me lift it out of the stand and bring it out of the house, we left a huge trail of pine needles behind us. Kim just groaned as she watched us. I'm sure she was remembering past years when, even though our tree hadn't lost nearly as many needles, the clean-up effort had clogged up her vacuum cleaner.
After dragging the tree down to the end of the driveway, I casually strolled back to the house. I was brushing needles off of my shoulders and out of my hair the whole way. I remembered to stop before re-entering the house to brush off my pants. As I was doing that, I noticed that I still had quite a few needles on my flannel shirt. That's when I got the bright idea to unzip my pants, untuck and unbutton my shirt, and shake it off. After a few vigorous shakes, I thought I'd gotten rid of the last remaining needles. I tucked my t-shirt and flannel back into my pants and walked into the house.
I got all of about three steps into the kitchen when I felt the first sting. Ouch. Something was in my underwear. "That can't be pine needles," I thought. I took a few more steps but had to stop. It felt like I had several pins stuck in my underwear. Each time I took a step, I got a couple pinpoint jabs. You can guess where I was getting stuck. "Good Lord," I said to myself. "How did they get there?" With no other recourse, I reached in and, sure enough, pulled out a couple of pine needles. I thought that was it. No such luck. Over the next five minutes, I must have pulled 15 more pine needles out of my underwear.
I think I've finally removed them all as I've been pain free for nearly ten minutes. I'm still not exactly sure how I got pine needles down my underwear. I guess that "great" tree might not have been so great after all.
P.S. In case you're wondering, yes, I did wash my hands before sitting down to type this.