"This Will Work..."

In I'm Robbo The Llama And I'm An Idiot, Robbo the Llama tells what happened when he decorated the family Christmas tree that he had earlier trapped and killed himself in true lumberjack-ish Washington lawyer-fashion:

So yesterday afternoon we broke out the footlocker full of ornaments and decorated the Christmas tree.

The Christmas tree that had grown on a hillside so that the base angled away from the true line of the trunk.

The base that I was too lazy to recut true and figured I could compensate with some clever adjustments of the holding screws on the stand.

The stand with the water reservoir that has bulged out over the years so that all four feet never touch the floor at the same time.

The floor in the corner of the living room that is somewhat warped and no longer, strickly speaking, a horizontal surface.

A surface the uneveness of which I've become accustomed to compensating by placing blocks of wood under the feet of the stand as needed.

Surely you can see where this is going by now.

Yippers, I fought the law of physics and the law won. About three quarters of the way in, with most of the decorations on the side of the tree facing out into the room, the damned thing fell over on me...

A few months into our marriage, Christmas came along and we newlyweds were full of glad tidings for the world in general. So, when a group of college kids set up a Christmas tree stand a few miles down the road from our apartment with a sign saying, "Help Us Pay For Our Tuition" Mr. P decided this was the place for us to get our tree. So one night after work and a few days before our Christmas party, Mr. P and I went and visited the lads and bought a lovely tree. Or so we thought. It wasn't until we got home, had taken the tree off the roof of the car and dragged it upstairs (we lived on the second floor) and were in the middle of attempting to set it up in our sunroom, when we noticed the thing had a very crooked trunk. Mr. P did not feel like dragging the thing back downstairs, tying it on to the roof of the car and taking it back to the college kids. So instead he went into our laundry room and got his trusty but tiny saw. While muttering some unkind sentiments about buying Christmas trees from college kids in the dark, he tried to saw the trunk at an angle that would hold the tree in an upright fashion. He did it and the tree was upright. I cheered. We broke out all the Christmas ornaments from Mr. P's grandparents plus the new ones I had purchased for our first tree and went to work. When we were done, our first tree looked terrific.

The next evening a friend came over to learn how to work with phyllo dough. She and I were in the middle of a glass of wine, rolling several dozen little individual spinach pie triangles for the party and talking about life when out in the sunroom there arose such a clatter, we sprang from my table to see what was the matter. The tree had fallen over and by doing so, had sent some of Mr. P's grandparents' Christmas ornaments to Christmas ornament purgatory. Looking at the gazillion of fragments of glass all around, all my friend could say was, "It's a good thing we were here to see that the cat didn't do this because she would be in big trouble with Mr. P." I made the executive decision to leave the tree and all the glass fragments as they were and wait for my new husband's arrival as this was clearly a husband's job to fix.

Mr. P arrived home all full of Christmas cheer until he saw the tree. We gently explained to him that it was the college kids's fault that some of his grandparents' Christmas ornaments had ended up in the dustbin of life. He began cursing a blue streak about college kids and went and got his saw. I asked him what he was going to do. He yelled, "I'm not dragging that THING through the house. I'm going to saw it IN HALF and throw it out THE WINDOW." So my friend and I quietly resumed our work (and our wine) back at the kitchen table while listening to Mr. P mutter and saw away. Since it was a tiny saw, it took him a while. Finally, he sawed the thing through, threw opened the window sash and with a great flourish threw the bottom half of the tree out the window. He released so much tension with that throw, the thing actually bounced several feet upon landing. He felt immediately better as the bouncing made him feel as if he had gotten something back. So, in a much more magnanimous spirit he picked up the top of the tree and stood it up before he too gave it the old heave-ho. When he stood the thing up, he realised the upper part of the tree was not crooked. The crooked part of the spine had been at the lower half of the tree. He called out to us, "Hey come and look. This will work!".

My friend and I walked into the sunroom to see Mr. P proudly displaying a 3 foot high Christmas tree already back in the stand. My friend looked at me, and I looked at Mr. P and said "You're right, this will work." My friend looked at me again with a look like "You're nuts!" Which I wasn't. I had just learned to trust my new husband when he said, "This will work."

A few weeks earlier, on a beautiful crisp fall day Mr. P and I were driving home from church. We were looking forward to a lazy day of watching football followed by a cosy Sunday night dinner. Out of the blue, Mr. P said, "I want to buy you a present." I responded, "Really?" Immediately visions of new leather gloves, silk scarves, perfume, or heels started flowing through my head. He said, "Yes, really. We need to go to the mall." I responded, "OK, let's go." So when Mr. P parked the car in front of my favorite department store all I could think was the lark was on the wing, the snail was on the thorn, God was in His heaven and all was right in the world. So imagine my surprise when we walked right through my favorite department store, pass the perfume counter, the scarf and gloves counter, and the shoe department and right into the belly of the mall. I asked Mr. P what was he thinking. He responded, "You'll see." Well, soon I saw that we were at the door of Victoria's Secret. I said, "I'm not going in there with you!" He asked, "Why? I AM YOUR HUSBAND!" I said, "I know, but YOU shouldn't be in there. That's a girl's shop." He said, "Uh-huh." And walked right in leaving me standing at the entrance to watch him buy me a gift. As he strode in with a clear sense of purpose and dressed in a suit, Cole Haan loafers and a trenchcoat, a young shop girl immediately approached him and asked him if she could be of any help. "I'm here to get a present for my wife -over there I think." He swiftly turned in the direction of nightgowns with the shopgirl trailing a few steps behind. When he reached a rack he liked, he started thumbing through them while the shop girl was telling him about the styles he was looking at. I knew him well enough to know he wasn't even listening to her. All of a sudden he stopped because he had found one he liked. He took it off the rack and held it up in his two hands to the overhead light for inspection. When he determined he could clearly see right through it, he turned around to the now mute shop girl and said, "This will work, ring it up." She quietly took it in her little mute way and rang it up. I was still standing at the door of Victoria's Secret, not knowing what to think of what I had just witnessed, when Mr. P strode out with an even stronger sense of purpose. He handed me the bag and said, "Here's your present. Put it on when we get home."

As we walked out of the Mall, I was left looking at my present and muttering to myself, "This will work."

Our first tree did work beautifully. Especially when all of the guests heard the reasons why...

Mrs. P

Here is Joseph Bottum's tale of the time his tree fell over.

Comments

[Old Dominion Tory]

A marvelous tale, Mrs. Peperium.

[Robert the Llama Butcher]

I have never been able to bring myself to set foot in Victoria's Secret. Indeed, I have a hard time even walking past the place, for fear that my eyes might accidentally stray in and somebody will catch me looking.

[Old Dominion Tory]

The first Christmas Mrs. Tory and I spent together was in Washington, DC and I hauled a four-to-five-foot tree from a lot in Upper Georgetown (near the "Social Safeway") to our place in Foggy Bottom (essentially 26th and K). A jolly time despite the distance because I imagined Bing Crosby crooning "Silver Bells." The Anchor Steam Christmas beer at home helped, too.

[mandingo]

Oh no! not another post with lingerie in it!

Victoria's Secret is an odd place - looks like a Parisian house of...

Regardless of lingerie or pine trees, these stories are golden and they deserve a book - like a Patum Peperium "reader" with illustrations - like from that illustrator from the New Yorker who draws those witty scenes, come on, you know the one.

Can I get banned from PP for mentioning the "New Yorker" leftist rag that it is?

[Old Dominion Tory]

For illustrations to the Patum Peperium Reader, I suggest the fellow--Elliot Banfield?--who does the marvelous illustrations for the Claremont Review of Books and the New York Sun. Politically and culturally, he'd be more in tune with Patum Peperium.
Of course, I'd hope that Patum Peperium Reader would include many of Mrs. Peperium's recipes (e.g., parsnip chowder and turkey soup).

[Misspent]

Let's not give her any ideas!

[Mrs. Peperium]

Mandingo, no you will not get banned. In fact,when I first was in art school I had hoped to make a living doing those little line drawings The New Yorker used to have dotting their pages. It seemed a wonderfully romantic job...

Old Dominion, as usual your chivalry knows no equal...

Misspent, you're right. Don't ever give me any ideas...

[Mrs. Peperium]

Robbo, your comment rates its own comment box. You sired 3 children without ever once entering Victoria's Secret? I think you win the Teddy Roosevelt award...

Of course, this could just be the frozen chosen Episcopalian in you....

[Fr. M.]

In a perfect world Victoria's Secret would only be available to married folks - and sold together with a user's manual: Humanae Vitae.

[Robert the LB]

Mrs. P - I think it has to do more with the Victorian lady's concern about not frightening horses in the street.

On the other hand, that the siring of Llama-ette No. 3 happened to temporaly match the delivery of the very last VS catelog to Orgle Manor is, of course, pure coincidence.

[Fr. M.]

Oh, and my apologies to anyone who might find it indecorous for the clergy to weigh in on the dispersement of ladies' bloomers and such.

[Mrs. Peperium]

Clergy are supposed to weigh in on those things. The world would be a much nicer place if they did it far more frequently and also talked about fire, brimstone and damnation too...

Father M, did you like what Basil wrote about Christmas cards? I thought it very nice.

Yes, Robbo, pure coincidence...

[Fr. M.]

Mrs. P.,
I like what Basil writes on everything. I will stroll over to Mayfair before bed and review his Christmas Card musings.

[mandingo]

And if you think the VS catalogs are risque now in 2007? No my friends, they are tame compared to the catalogs of say, 1985 when I graduated high school and the company was an independent one from London. Those are collectors items they tell me, especially the ones with Harry Connick jrs future wife in them. Hot blooded American young man I was back then. But enough of that and lets move on to more higher subjects like culture, what's for dinner, cocktails, and Episcopalian priestesses misbehavin.

BTW, as a life long New Yorker I grew up every Christmas seeing tons of trees being sold on every street corner - now that I move to the county of Nassau, I haven't seen any x-mas tree shops. I miss the pine needles and the aromatic smell the trees gave off - memories of youth, and drinking hot cocoa, and watching Christmas television shows on the major networks when "Christmas" wasn't the four letter word it has sadly become now!

Alas...

[Old Dominion Tory]

No apologies necessary, Father. I echo Mrs. Peperium's sentiments that it is entirely appropriate for the clergy to weigh in on such matters.

[Old Dominion Tory]

An amusing feature from BBC News about men in lingerie deaprtments and shops.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/6171811.stm

[mandingo]

"An amusing feature from BBC News about men in lingerie deaprtments and shops."

isn't there a tradition in the UK of men wearing women's lingerie?

Oh, the humanity!