That Time 10,000 Beetles Hatched Out of My Christmas Tree

So I sort of keep wanting to rant about Donald Trump, but I figure y'all are over that by now. I will say that jihadists and terrorists are Muslim the way Westboro Baptist church members are Christian, but that's all. No, it's not. Yesterday I went to yoga. It was mostly women I already knew, and before class we were muttering about Donald Trump. A new woman came in and spread her mat next to mine. I said, "I don't care what your political beliefs are except that I hope you won't vote for Donald Trump." She said, "I'm Muslim, so no worries." Because yes, we have Muslims, right here in River City Bristol. And we all remain more likely to get killed in a car wreck headed to Food City than by terrorists.

Anyhow. This morning my friend Mary lamented the death of two of her major household appliances. I feel for her--such a pain in the rear--so in solidarity told her that one year 10,000 beetles hatched out of my Christmas tree. She said, "And now you laugh about it, RIGHT? RIGHT?"

I'll leave it to you to decide.

I think my son was eight years old, which would have made it our second Christmas in this house. We've lived in Bristol for 18 years, and we always get our tree and wreaths from the same tree sellers, who set up on Volunteer Parkway right down from our old house. (I don't blame them for the beetles.) Back then we liked white pines for our Christmas tree--long, lush, soft branches. Kind of hard to hang ornaments on, but really pretty with lights.

We buy our Christmas tree on the Saturday of Thanksgiving week and decorate it on Sunday. I won't allow it to go up any earlier, and my husband loves Christmas decorations (really, I should hire the man out. He's fantastic at Christmas decorations. Every year I get complemented on the centerpiece on my dining room table and have to confess I don't have a damn thing to do with it.) So the tree had been up, and it wasn't all that close to Christmas yet because my daughter was still at school, and my son was sick with a fever and home on the couch, listless. I was just getting him to turn off SportsCenter and take a nap--it was right around midday--and I looked up to click off the tv and saw the Christmas tree enveloped in a black cloud.

At first I thought it was smoke. I honestly thought the tree was on fire. This actually happened once in my family--when my father was small, one of my great-uncles flicked a cigar ash onto the tree and the whole house burnt down. So my first instinct was to panic, grab my boy, and get out.

Then I saw that the cloud was settling. That it was seething. That it was, in fact, alive--a cloud made up of very small black insects. When I say 10,000 of them I am not exaggerating. I am not making that number up (I wish I were making that number up!). Later--much later--being of a scientific mind, I counted the number of small black insects that died all over my handmade embroidered sequined and felted Christmas tree skirt--just before I threw that sucker, unsalvageable, into the trash--and it was over 1,000.

Not. Making. That. Up.

We put our tree up in the corner of the family room, near the wall of windows. To get it there we have to pull the couch and loveseat and end tables out of the way, which meant that to get that tree and all those insects out of my house, I had to move the furniture first. I've never moved so fast. I grabbed the tree--a huge tree, of course it was--and hoisted, and spilled the water from the tree stand all over creation--drowning insects, soaking already-wrapped gifts (yeah, I don't put gifts out that early anymore, either), heaving, tripping, probably cussing, until the tree was on the front lawn.

Still fully decorated. Trailing lights and a river of tree sap.

Meanwhile, the family room was full of small black insects dying in puddles of tree sap. Great mounds of tree sap, inordinate amounts, blobbed along the floor, making a trail to show where I'd dragged the tree, and every mound, as well as the non-sapped bits of floor in between, covered with bugs. Dying bugs, thank God--I still shudder to think of all those insects flying free inside my home--but yet bugs. Unmistakably. Ten thousand of them.

I got the vacuum. And the mop. My feverish son watched from the couch--this was better than SportsCenter. I cleaned and muttered and soaked up the spilled water and moved the sopping gifts to the porch--in addition to being wet they were covered in sap and dead insects--I got my coat and went out to the tree and started stripping ornaments--they were covered in sap and dead insects--I started doing ornament triage. We had to save George Washington, one of my husband's childhood treasures, and he's made of felt, so that involved some fairly careful cleaning. Less important ornaments, including just about every one made of paper, were condemned. You have to go with what you can. I took the battle-stained tree skirt and hung it in the garage, planning to rehab it--that sucker took me months to make--but eventually recognized the job as hopeless. (My neighbor made me a quilted tree skirt to replace it. It's lovely. I like it much better than the old felted one.)

Finally I divested the tree of lights by knocking it over, grabbing onto the end of the light strand, and kicking the tree around the yard, unrolling lights as I went. I felt a little better then.

Back in the house, the magic internet gave me to understand that the insects were some sort of beetle, that the parent beetle lays eggs beneath the bark of the tree in the fall, and that the insects should have hatched in the spring, but because of the warmth of the house hatched early--too early, which is why they all immediately died. The sap came from the bark being burst open by ten thousand beetles hatching. They were entirely harmless, except, of course, that they were ten thousand beetles hatching out of the Christmas tree.

My family remembers this as a traumatic event not because of the beetles, but because it was the year Mom Made Us Buy An Artificial Tree. I did. We went to Wal-Mart that night and bought a perfectly acceptable Christmas tree, pre-lit, large, lovely, certified bug-free, and the rest of the family spent the remaining weeks of the holiday season moaning as though I'd personally murdered Santa Claus. The fake tree still sits in the corner of our basement storage. We've never used it again.

We did switch from white pine to Scotch fir--short, prickly needles, lots of good branches for hanging, and also, beetles don't lay eggs in them. So Beetle Death is not likely to happen again. Which is a good thing. It's sort of like having the fire department come to your house on Thanksgiving. It's a funny story so long as it never happens again.

Let Us Not Blame Muslims

Once I said something that made a person really, really angry. In fact it pretty much killed any chance we ever had, however slight, of developing a friendship. I'm pretty sure my comment caused her to actively avoid me for the rest of the four years our husbands did their medical training together. As such, it may have been the most efficient, economical use of snark I've ever managed in my life.

The woman in question had had her purse stolen, on a downtown city street, by a young Black man. Retelling the incident to a group of us--I'm guessing it was some sort of medical residents dinner, the type of thing drug companies would pay for, back in the day, but I really don't remember--anyway, in retelling her story she spouted a prolonged very racist comment, and when I looked shocked--I must have looked shocked--she turned to me, and said, "What? I don't want to be racist, but it was a BLACK man that mugged me."

"Ah," I said. "And how does your husband feel about you becoming a lesbian?"

This was twenty-five years ago. She looked horrified, and demanded to know what I meant.

"Well," I said, "you said it was a Black MAN that mugged you. So if you now hate all Black people, I figured you must hate all men, too."

As I said, the end of the possibility of our friendship. On both sides.

I thought of this yesterday when I read that Donald Trump now wants to keep all Muslims out of the United States. Yep, some Muslims are radicalized terrorists, including the 2 who just killed 14 people in San Bernadino. Of course, 1 in every 5 people is Muslim, worldwide, so it stands to reason that some of the however-many mass shootings we've had here in the United States would be done by Muslims. (The actual number of mass shootings is apparently one of those moving targets. Do you count gang warfare? Domestic violence, where a parent kills their spouse and several children? Or just shoot-up-a-movie-theater shootings?) Anyhow, yes, the San Bernadino killers were Muslim. The Sandy Hook killer professed to be a Christian. As did the guy that shot up the AME Church in Charleston. A Christian White guy, shooting up a Black Christian church. So do we hate all White people? Or do we just say all Christians are whack?

When I went to Egypt I was impressed by the level of education and openness shown by our tourist guides, all of whom happened to be Muslim. (As a country, Egypt is 10% Christian.) To become an Egyptologist, which all our tour guides were, you essentially need a PhD in ancient Egyptian history, plus the ability to speak at least two languages fluently--most tour guides we met spoke more. On our Nile cruise ship we had 4 tour guides, 2 who led English-language tours, 1 who led the Norwegians, and 1 who led the Swiss. (I'm still not sure what language the Swiss tours were in. The Swiss seemed to mostly speak a form of German, but I conversed with them in bad French--bad on my end. The Norwegians all spoke perfect unaccented English as well as Norwegian, which as usual left the Americans looking like monoglot morons.) At the temples and pyramids, you heard Egyptian guides speaking all sorts of languages, conversantly--once at the quarry in Aswan, site of the Unfinished Obelisk, we sent my children and another man from our group to go eavesdrop on a Spanish-language guide, because we wanted to know more about the obelisk. Seeing our interest, the guide switched briefly to English, for our sakes.

One afternoon on the boat, the one female tour guide, who I think was in charge of the Swiss tourists, stopped my husband and thanked him for bringing his children to Egypt. She said she wanted Americans to know that most Muslims were peaceful, normal people, trying to raise their families and worship God just as most people were worldwide. She was grateful that our children, my husband and mine, had an opportunity to realize that the next word after "Muslim" was not "terrorist."

I'm glad my children know that. I'm glad I know that. I'm seriously, seriously done with Donald Trump. Maybe the man needs to travel a little more, or maybe he needs to shut his mouth. Or, actually, maybe he needs to keep opening it--you never know when someone will say something that accidentally ends your relationship with them, even before it properly begins.

Time to Prepare

Because we built our house, and I had a chance to design my office myself, my desk is built into a corner of the end of an L-shaped space. I've got windows on each side of me, so that I get plenty of light, but they're too high for me to see out of them when I'm working, so that I can't be endlessly distracted by what the horses are doing in the pasture. Just now, as I write this, the sky outside the windows is gunmetal gray, a flat, dark color that as a child always thrilled me because I was safe inside.

Christmas candles flicker on both window ledges. They're electric, powered by an insane number of batteries. I don't know why its so pleasing to me that they flicker instead of shine steadily. People always seem to be attracted to candles, to fire.

We lit two candles on the advent wreath in church yesterday. I love the Catholic/Episcopal season of advent--I sort of think the other Christians are missing out. Some of them hurl themselves straight into Christmas the moment the calendar reads December. The Christmas play is next week, the Christmas concert a few days later--then Christmas itself comes and the whole party is over, whereas in my faith tradition Christmas is when the party is supposed to start.

In my faith we have time to prepare. This is a good thing, because I for one need it. I did an amazing amount of work in my office this weekend, with the result that I have clear desk-space for the first time in months, but the office floor looks like a toy store and a book store collided. (I am once again paying my daughter, and any of her friends who want to help, to wrap presents.) My husband, who loves loves loves to decorate, spent five hours on Saturday--literally, until dark--with our daughter, stringing lights on the trees and bushes outside. We have a lot of trees and bushes. The trick is to decorate as many as possible while NOT blowing fuses; the solution is LED lights, which don't pull as much electricity, and which my husband bought an astonishing number of last year, after Christmas, when they were on super-sale.

The house looks great. You should drive by. We're not ready for Christmas yet, but we're enjoying our preparations.

Facebook reminded me that today is the seven-year anniversary of my official Facebook-friendship with the man who is now my brother-in-law, Mike Ries. On Thanksgiving, when the turkey caught fire and the smoke detector was sounding and I couldn't get it to stop (but before the firemen showed up), and my husband was stalking around trying to figure out why the alarm wouldn't go off, and the babies were wailing and my sister was trying to comfort them, and I don't know what my mom was doing, probably laughing her ass off, Mike gave me a hug and asked if I was okay. I appreciate that. I appreciate that my sister had the profound good sense to marry a good man, and I enjoy his company very much.

Also, it's my mother's birthday. Thinking of you, Mom. Love you very much. Glad you got to see your oldest grandson yesterday--you made his day. (Hope you got that cookie tin back.)

Advent Snark: What are We Waiting For?

I woke up in a particularly grumpy mood this morning. Despite the internet, which is being as helpful as possible today, what with fifteen-things-for-when-the-world-is-shitty-and-terrifying/, an easy way to write all the senators who yesterday voted against sensible gun control, and this, once my family cruelly abandoned me to go to work and school, I snarked all over a complete stranger on a horse forum, and the stranger called me out. Which I deserved, but you know? Some days I want to snark at strangers.

Yesterday my son laughed at me for writing about gun control on my blog. "Make another choice!" he said. He thinks I'm better suited to snark and horses. Probably I am.

And yet.

Aren't we supposed to be worrying about All The Things?

Right now I know that this is part of the problem. My blood pressure is still too high and I haven't folded the laundry I did on Monday. I have too many books to read and yesterday I checked 12 out from the library. There are Christmas gifts piled all over my office. There are bills I should pay, books I should write, lots and lots of things I should do. We're out of cat food. The cats are not starving--they eat mice--but they're pissed.

Yesterday I got two messages from teachers who've read The War That Saved My Life to their students, telling me how much the students loved it. This is the best news I could possibly get. I want to win all the things, of course--Shiny Book Stickers for everyone!--but in the end I'd rather, really would rather, have children love my book than anything else. When I was a child, books were my life preserver. I held onto certain stories for years, reading them over and over, finding hope and compassion when I most needed it. And now I maybe get to pass that gift forward, give one child the book he or she needs to stay afloat in hard times. It's the greatest gift I could ask for. It trumps All The Things.

Something Needs to Change

Occasionally, in much less serious cases, my family goes with the theory that if you don't know what to do, change something. Anything. See if it works.  Just as the moment the only example I can bring to mind is when we were on a family trip in Paris, and our all-week Metro cards kept not working. Every time, I would have to go explain the situation, in my bad tourist French, to the bored Metro employee sitting in the little box in the station. It got really old. Finally we decided that we had to do something different--so we gave the cards, which I'd been keeping in a pocket of my purse, to my husband to hold. They worked correctly from then on. It turned out the magnet holding my purse shut was screwing up the cards.

I wish we had an easy answer to the shootings in America, but if we did, we'd have solved this problem long ago. All I know is, we have to do something different. There's been a mass shooting for every day of 2015. Kindergartners and now disabled people.

I'd like to hear from all of you: what could be changed? What might be different? My husband says it would take a wholesale realignment of our society. I've come to believe that even if the actions we take now only reduce violence ten years from now, we need to take those actions. Otherwise in ten years we'll be sitting in the same place, wondering how to fix this.

We need to fix this. Start with one thing, any one thing. Do it differently. Do something.

Ideas?

Sick Day

I got sidelined by a rather vicious cold. It was clearly only a cold, yet Tuesday (yesterday) I did nothing. I mean I didn't even bother to move the sheets from the washer to the dryer. I laid on the couch. I slept. I answered the phone, and it was crummy news--a friend is moving away--and that made me wish I'd just let the answering machine pick up. I ate dinner--fried chicken my husband picked up on his way home from basketball practice--but I didn't scrape my plate.

I did text my children, trying to get them to feel sorry for me. They didn't. My son texted back a photograph of two extra-large blackboards filled with math equations from his corporate finance class. My daughter muttered about not wanting to catch my germs. My husband, bless him, came into the bedroom rather late at night, peering at his iPad, and said, "More bad news: you didn't win the Goodreads voting."

My heart had not been set on winning the Goodreads voting, but I was chuffed by his indignation on my behalf. He said, "You got 5902 votes. The winner got 43000. It's some book called "Magnus Chase" by some guy named Rick Riordan."

"Yeah," I said. "That's the book Katie made me go out and get for her on its publication date. It's kind of a big deal."

"Never heard  of it," my husband said. "Is it going to win the Newbery?"

"I doubt it," I said.

"That's good," he said, and went and slept in the guest room, to avoid my germs.

Today I'm not well, but I'm better. I woke to see my daughter off to school. Then I went back to sleep. Since waking a second time, I've accomplished several meaningful things:

--I showered.
--I made a brief run to the grocery, including getting some prescriptions filled.
--I emptied the dishwasher, filled it, and restarted it.
--I sent two emails.
--I made a phone call about a Christmas gift.
--I'm writing a mostly meaningless blog.

Now I'm going to take a nap, in hopes that when my daughter gets home, I'll have energy to help her with the barn chores. Then maybe--maybe--I'll cook dinner. It's looking up.

Fleeing Christmas

Yesterday at Mass, our celebrant (not the usual Father Kevin, but Archbishop Broglio, here in town visiting family for the holidays--yeah, we feel kinda cool, having an archbishop in the family and all that. Not my own personal family, but my church family. He's here a lot. Better still, he's Archbishop for Military Services USA, which means he's badass, too, in a holy reverent wearing-a-pink-hat kind of way) anyhow, clearly I digress--Archbishop Broglio (don't know why he's "Arch" bishop and not just plain bishop; no one's ever been able to explain that) said that advent calls us to do three things:

1) Flee.

2) Be silent.

3) Pray.

I am not really very good at homilies--sometimes my mind drifts off into writings of my own creation, so that the homily becomes more a chance for me to fix plot holes--but this one was the sort I liked, clear, simple, and easy to remember. Plus it seemed like such a good idea. Flee. Oh hell yes. I love Christmas but sometimes it seems to come packed with way too much stuff. Matching outfits (we don't actually do those anymore, now that the children--let alone my husband--refuse to wear coordinated pjs). Cookies (mostly I save those for Christmas Eve. We always make Christmas cookies on Christmas eve morning.). Cards? (Last year I skipped them. It was, honestly, awesome. I sort of feel bad about not sending everyone photos of my lovely children, a year older once again, but at the same time THIS IS WHY WE INVENTED THE INTERNET, PEOPLE.) Obligations which, the more you think about them, seem to have absolutely nothing to do with the birth of Christ.

Here is stuff I love: parties. From the all-day binge that is my friend's annual brunch to the pony club holiday party, to thawing out that leg of lamb for my husband's partners to eat. I've got a new dress with sparkles on it. Imagonna shine.

Ornaments. Long ago we started a tradition of buying Christmas ornaments on our family travels. This morning while I was watering the tree I noticed one painted with an image of the USS Constitution, the tall ship that stands in Boston Harbor. I was immediately transported back to a very hot day, a very interesting tour, and my 7-year-old son being crabby as all hell because we were refusing to spend $200 each for bleacher seats to see the RedSox/Yankees. (He's still bitter. I'm still glad we didn't do it.)

Music. All the music., but especially Pentatonix.

Buying gifts, sort of. Too much shopping makes me crazy. Shopping on Black Friday? Never. (Getting a bargain on the internet? Sure.) Deciding which local stores I love best and making a point to go there? absolutely! Buying the right book for someone? perhaps my favorite gift of all.

Speaking of, if you want signed copies of The War That Saved My Life, and you don't live close enough to swing by the house or drop them off at Faith in Action (I'm there every Wednesday), Parnassus Books in Nashville has them in stock, AND today only is offering 15% off every signed book in the store. Think about where you shop. Parnassus rocks.