It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

At least, in my South Florida apartment, it is.

I dragged Tim out Christmas Decor shopping today. (Necessity. Does not count in my therapist-induced deprivation. Also, I bought the eyeliner. So there.)

Target, Ho!

This is the first Christmas Tim and I will spend together as husband and wife, and also the first opportunity I've had to have my own tree. In the past, I have always gone home to mom and dad's, wherever I was. Since meeting Tim, we have split the holiday between my family and his. It never made much sense to put up a tree when we wouldn't even be home for Christmas.

This year, we decided to stay put. We are spending out first married Christmas home, just the two of us. So I get to have a tree!

Let me get the shocking and appalling part over with first:

I bought a fake tree.

To those who know me well, this is close to sacrilege.

The first year that I moved out of the house, my mother talked about getting a fake tree. Easier, she said. No pine needles, no watering, no trekking into the woods and chopping one down.

I pitched a fit. Christmas centered around having an real pine tree in the house - the smell, the sap, the authenticity!

My mother caved (her sentimental Christmas loving heart never would have settled for a plastic tree anyway) and the Akins' household was saved from ever seeing an impostor Christmas tree. (It has seen its fair share of scrawny, Charlie Brown trees since I left, but at least they have been real.)

Now that I am the one faced with watering a tree, sap, shed pine needles all over the carpet, and the prospect of my cats climbing, and getting stuck in, a real tree, I opted for an inflammable, 7.5 foot (fake) Jackson pine.

Amazingly enough, Scrooge McDuck (a.k.a. my husband) did not freak out too much when, in addition to the tree, I ran through the aisles of Target tossing extra items into the cart: ornaments, a star for the top, lights, garland, tinsel, stockings (one each for Tim, myself, Hades, Azrael, Styx and Hydra), glitter glue, wrapping paper, scotch tape, Christmas cards, and an advent calendar for the pets, and evergreen scented candles so I can pretend the tree is real. Tim drew the line at the movable, lighted reindeer for the patio.

Now I can't wait to decorate!

Without the woes of guesstimating how long a tree will live and look pretty, I can join the masses of starting Christmas way too early, and erect my tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Sweet.