A Christmas tree post with no pictures of Christmas trees

Like I said, no particular order.

One of my favorite holiday traditions involves torturing my little brother. Every year, I bribe him to go get a Christmas tree with me. The bribe is usually for dinner of his choice and somehow, without fail, the predetermined day falls on one with truly horrible weather. One time it was 15 degrees outside; we went to the closest lot we could find argued for about 5 minutes and quickly left with a tree. Last year it was pouring and since neither of us is sweet enough to melt in the rain, we participated in the yearly Christmas tree negotiations.

Stupid brother likes short fat Christmas trees. I like 6 foot-ish nicely filled out trees in generic Christmas tree shape. He says I'm boring. We argue about it every year, brother always insisting that I like dumb trees. The simple fact that I do not have space for a tree with the sort of girth he is suggesting is not a valid argument. On the upside, we don't argue about what type. We always get a noble; we are allergic to all other varieties.

This year when I informed him it was time for our annual Christmas tree excursion he looked at me incredulously.

"I don't have to do that anymore! That's his job." He pointed at my handsome friend.

What a silly boy. Of course he doesn't get off that easily. It just means that now I get to drag both of them with me. Handsome friend is willing, stupid brother is not.

This year however I get a BRILLIANT idea. We will go to a Christmas tree farm and cut our own tree. I proposed this adventure and got, unsurprisingly, mixed reactions. Handsome friend is up for anything, stupid brother bitches. And continues to bitch until we started out there. The farm was 7 miles out a twisty road that skirts the Washougal river, an interesting drive that none of us had ever taken before. The farm was easy to find and when we got there we realized, it had a petting zoo.

You'd think these boys had never seen a horse before. Stupid brother quickly made friends with a miniature donkey (fitting yes?) and handsome friend chatted up a pair of mini horses. There were tiny goats, a golden retriever and a very nice man running the operation. He outfitted us with a tree cart and saw. We headed out at the same time a family of two teenage girls and their mother. Picking a tree wasn't too hard, lots of options and someone with a valid opinion (not my brother). In fact, I'm convinced this is the prettiest Christmas tree I've ever had.

As I was waiting for the nice Christmas tree man to run our tree through the shaker machine the family of girls came back pulling their tree. The older girl, beautiful in the way of all 17 year old girls, looked at me and said, "Well, that took us a whole lot longer than it took you." She then paused and took stock of my two guys making goo-goo eyes at the pack animals and said, "Oh, I see. It's because you had two big boys with you."

"Hey, I cut most of mine down all by myself."

"Well, I cut the whole thing down and I hauled it back. I saw you. You didn't have to do it at all."

I didn't have the hear to tell her that as far as this whole thing went, I've paid my dues to the goddesses of feminine empowerment. I wandered off into the barn, where there were rabbits, a ducks that took a flying leap at stupid brother, and some squirmy oinkers. And as a beautiful detail, someone had hung shiny Christmas ornaments all over the barn. In the dim evening light they reflected the lights and made everything seem warm and old-time picture perfect. It sorta was.