Oh Christmas Tree, you're worth it

Oh, it's the most wonderful time of the year.

Stop laughing; I'm serious! I love Christmas and everything that comes with it. Call me crazy. Call me childish. Just call me in the Christmas spirit.

Aside from buying the perfect presents for people, the tree has to be my favorite part. I get a real tree every year. It's an ordeal, but it's so worth it. I'll go through the trouble before, the cleaning and watering during and the mess afterward just so I can open my door to that fresh pine scent.

Oh, and it IS an ordeal. Take last year for example.

I don't have a truck, so I drove the car to the tree lot. The trunk was cleaned, but I had forgotten to lay down a tarp to catch the needles. Actually, that logic didn't occur to me until just now. Hindsight's 20-20, I guess.

My mom stole my tree stand, so I ran over to Kmart to purchase a new one. I got the tree home and out of the car using old ski gloves, but there was no way I could get it in the house and standing upright on my own.

I knew this, though, and had invited two girlfriends over for a tree party. They arrived and we tried, oh did we try, to get that tree in the new stand. After each of us crawled under the thing and couldn't get the stupid stand to hold the tree up, I realized it wasn't us. It was the stand. (It was the stand, I tell you. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

So at nearly 9 o'clock at night we troop out to Wally World for a new stand and to replenish our party supplies. Back at the house, the tree went up, ornaments went on and a makeshift skirt of sheer curtains and white Christmas lights went around the base. I even had presents to put under there.

That skirt was cute, and made it impossible to vacuum the needles. They don't fall too much, though, as long as you water it. A Christmas tree is the only plant I like because it's supposed to die. All my other plants die, but it's OK with a Christmas tree you know it's going to happen.

This takes me to the tree removal. People love to help decorate and play with presents, but when the gifts are gone and the tree needs to be taken away, where are they?

It probably doesn't help that I waited until the third week of January to remove it. My mom always left the thing in the living room well into the new year. Then again, she had three kids to help with removal.

I had two hands and a blue tarp. Skipping a few details that I divulged in the blog I wrote about the process ("If a tree falls in my apartment, can you hear me yelling?") I spilled the water left in the stand, got stabbed with dry needles and finally yanked the thing out into the gravel parking lot behind my apartment building.

It took me almost an hour to clean up all the needles. I found another last week. I spent about 30 minutes unwrapping like 87 feet of Christmas lights from the tree in the parking lot, and then I happily — and probably quite forcefully — shoved the miserable thing into the Dumpster.

And I'm doing it all over again this year. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.