How Did That Get There?*

....Not easily.  For reasons I cannot explain, OilMan wanted to get a Christmas tree today. This is not an activity he enjoys, so perhaps he just wanted to get it over with. We are surrounded by 'choose your tree and cut it down' lots and usually alternate between that or an artificial tree which has the advantage of being pre-lighted and the disadvantage of having stood in the corner of the garage for so many years that it is looking very tatty. In fact it would have gone to the dump by now if OilMan had bought a pickup instead of a Fusion...No way is it going on top of my car....

Because the cut your own trees often come with thick trunks which are very heavy and don't fit into the tree stand, we decided to go to the little nursery which would be walking distance from our house if only we could walk through vineyards and not on a highway....

We drove up to the nursery and before he even got out of the car, OilMan said, "I want that one"...but I knew better than to fall for that tired old ploy. He uses it whenever he has to go shopping for anything with me and I am wise to his ways....

It was a sunny but very chilly day and was made less clement by the fellow hosing down every tree as well as filling the tree stands with water. There were large bricks on the stands in anticipation of a windy afternoon, so we edged our way between rows of wet, dripping trees trying to envision what they might look like if we could pull them out.

In the end, we chose one, just before we realized it also had a very thick trunk and weighed a ton. A young man came out, hoisted the tree on top of OilMan's car, whipped out some twine,  tied the tree down and went off to help someone else. Only then did we realize that he had tied the doors closed.  While the young man went to get more twine, I managed to climb into the back seat and from there into the driver's seat. It wasn't pretty but it worked.  OilMan sat in the back seat and I drove home. 

*This little saga must have been inspired by Ridgeback 13's comment, "sometimes working with constraints stimulates creativity...Are you going to add 'needs to have landed on my car' to your constraints? I think maybe we're working with too many constraints....