In praise of Gorilla Glue

Hallelujah! The Gorilla Glue worked! The bottom ring that holds the branches is now firmly glued into place, doing it's job as in years past. We checked it last night and placed the branches in their slots, leaving them in overnight with nothing else on the tree. Since the ring stayed in place with the weight of the branches in it I went ahead and put the lights on the tree today. Of course before I could put up lights, I had to go and buy some. I discovered that I only had 2 strands of lights and one of those didn't work at all, no matter what I did to it. I vaguely remember throwing out lights last year and if I remember correctly, these were lights that were on the tree and had died after the tree was completely decorated. Since removing those lights would have required a removal of all of the other decorations, we just left them on and threw them out when we took the tree down.

Our tree now has 4 strands of lights on it. There are two multi-colored strands and two strands of clear lights. These are in alternating order. So far the only decoration on the tree other than the lights is strands of red wooden beads. These look very much like strands of cranberries. We have decided that this year we will string popcorn to add to the tree. I don't really care for "garland" and prefer decorations that look like they could have come from 100 years ago. Not that I have any that are that old, but I do have a collection of Santa decorations that look hand carved. I also have a thing for bells, and have a variety of bell ornaments, many of which I made myself. I think the white popcorn will really compliment the red beads.

Up until recently I would not have used strands of popcorn as a decoration. However, about a year ago I was given a hot air popper. I love air popped popcorn, it's so much healthier than microwave popcorn. Since I use real butter on popcorn that I'm going to eat, there is none of that fake fat that is in microwave popcorn. I know there are people that speak of the evils of real butter, but I'll take the real thing all the time. I can taste the difference between butter and margarine and margarine is a pale imitation as far as I'm concerned. Also I have a real problem with lots of "man made" foods, because I don't think the body knows on a molecular level what to do with fake foods. I was not surprised to hear news reports discussing "Popcorn Lung", which is a condition found in workers at factories that manufacture microwave popcorn. It seems the airborne mist resulting from the "butter flavoring" causes the small airways in the lung to become scarred, so the victim struggles to breath. It's irreversible and often fatal. They say when you open a bag of microwave popcorn you release these airborne particles. Doesn't sound like a good situation to me. Okay, soapbox time is over, let's just say I'll take my popcorn air popped, thank you very much.

After we pop, string and hang the strands of popcorn then we'll proceed with the rest of the decorating. Of course I don't know how long this process is going to take, since we may have to pop quite a bit of popcorn to do the job. I'm sure once the house is filled with the smell of popcorn there are going to be family members who will need a bowl, complete with salt and butter. I also don't know how long it's going to take to string the popcorn. I've never done it before, but hopefully I will get some help with stringing it! We don't rush getting the decorations on. We take our time and make it an enjoyable process. We do the same thing in reverse when the time comes to take the decorations down and put the tree away for another year.

Last year I purchased several storage containers for our Christmas decorations. It's nice to finally have a container to hold the tree that was actually intended for that purpose. Same thing goes for our ornaments and my door wreath. The door wreath is a new addition and I bought it at the same time that I bought something to store it in. My only complaint about my wreath is that there isn't quite enough space between our two front doors. As a result of this, you actually have to make sure that the storm door is closed completely. I didn't do that one morning last Christmas season as I left for work. We came home to find the storm door completely open and the hydraulic door closer broken beyond redemption. It seems the wind caught the door and whipped it open, breaking the closer and damaging the top of the storm door in the process. Since that time we have had to make a conscious effort to close the storm door. There are some family members who don't seem to have the "conscious" part down yet, even after a year. Maybe they are just in too big of a hurry coming and going, I don't know.

As I sit here typing this, our Sheltie, Delta is going crazy in the yard. She doesn't want to be inside right now. The woods are full of deer and she is very territorial, barking and barking to warn all of those deer to stay off of her turf. We have brought her in several times since it got dark, but she's not in the house 2 minutes before she's whining and begging to go back outside. This is the worst I've seen her. She is usually pretty vocal after dark, barking at the woods, but it's bad tonight. It's possible that the deer are closer than usual tonight. Right around dusk we heard a gunshot, quite close. Just one shot, so I figure it was a lone hunter and he got his quarry. It is possible however that the incident scattered the deer in the woods and has caused them to venture closer to us than is usual. They are always pretty close by anyway, I know this because I've seen them in my garden and at the edge of the yard many times.