The Official Start of the Holidays

M is home. I drove up through the melting ice and experienced our mountain micro climates first hand: there was no snow in Burnsville, but as soon as I got to the other side of town, there was, and it got thicker and deeper as I got into Celo. Beautiful, although as I've said before, I'm a snow driving wimp.

M has been reading Che Guevara and Revolution for the Hell of It. General Ernesto apparently had quite a lot to say on a variety of subjects; primarily that in a revolution, either you win or you die. I thought this was too simple, but M, whose new ambition is to be a revolutionary, says that revolution is simple. Very simple: General Ernesto said so. Don't buy into the corporate American deathwatch - if everyone just stopped working altogether than we could start a revolution. Mmmmmmmmkay. M also asked how my quest for the perfect man was going.
"It's hopeless." I said, "And anyway, I'm not even looking. I gave all that up."
"There has to be somebody," he said, "Even if not in Asheville. Maybe you should go to Japan."
"Japan?"
"Those Asian guys are probably totally desperate." said M cheeringly. "They'd love you."
"I guess I could get a Russian mail order husband" I said doubtfully.
"That would be cool," remarked General Ernesto. "I really want to go to Russia. It's where communism came the closest to working."

On our way home, after a stop at the Evil Food Empire (because we wanted to get McSick, I guess. The McTummyache. The McHurls, and also the General really wanted to try a McRib, and it's okay, because we weren't really giving them that much money where it would make a difference) we went to get a Christmas tree. There's a sign just through Burnsville that said 4000 trees pick your own. I wanted 4000 trees, so we went: over the jarring unmarked speed bumps and through the trailer park to scary Grandpa's Tree Farm we went. There were not 4000 trees there at the end of the trailer park. There were more like 40, and they were kind of sad, and the three hatchet faced old men guarding the trees looked like extras from Deliverance. We turned our hippy car around and took our long haired selves out of there accompanied by sneering angry looks. Then we went to the place we went last year. Closed, said a big cardboard sign. It was closed last year too, but there was no sign, so we cut a tree down anyway. The sign, though, makes it too official for such guerrilla action. We went to another place down the road. Tree farm is kind of a glamourous appellation for about 30 odd small fir trees planted among the rhododendrons on the near vertical slope above a brick rancher with a satellite dish, but whatever. A boy about M's age came out and helped us; he was cute, shy, and nearly silent. $25 later and we have a somewhat smaller than usual, sparser than before, tree in the living room. But it's going to be cute. It leans a bit. It has some bare spots. I guess it was a bad year for the Christmas tree farms.

So, the tree is up but not decorated yet except for the lights and garland. We're waiting for A to do that; poor A, who I kind of roped into a babysitting gig for a friend of mine that will go on until the wee hours. And, as usual, my computer access will be random and brief through the next weeks as the General creates a revolution via Battlefield 1942. And I am happy, sitting in the living room looking at the tree lights, knitting and listening to Etta James sing Christmas carols while M makes derogatory remarks about my taste in music and Theo, driven mad by happiness over having his boy home, runs in whacked out collie circles around the house.