The One Where Nobody Got Hurt

New Year's Eve. 

Good goddamn riddance.

It started off with a bang--I got to spend four or five glorious hours at my in laws' house. 

Fun times.

Times were made all the more fun by the lack of electricity at their house. Not an unusual occurrence--the power goes out if you sneeze too hard there--but since they're on a well, it means no flushing and no running water, on top of no heat and no television and no nothing else. Which meant DH and I spent the day hooking up generators, cleaning, repeating things three or four times for MIL to actually listen, and trying to keep our children from killing each other.

Fine. We finally left. The gods smiled.

Briefly.

I was dozing in the car when we rounded the corner to home. You know--the dream house that's become a money pit? The one with the pinhole leaks and the rotted walls and the wonky electricity wiring and everything else we grin and bear? That one.

So I'm dozing. We round the corner. I hear DH almost yell, "Oh my GOD!" I fling my eyes open, and see our pear tree. Split, straight down the middle, one half laying on the ground like a dead person, and the other standing up saluting his mate. This is the pear tree that's huge and dead-center in the front yard. The one that shades the picture window in the living room. And the one that DH offhandedly mention we'd have to take down in the next few years, before a storm split it down the middle.

He should stop speaking of such things.

So we spent the afternoon in arctic temperatures and Siberian winds, cutting up the M-Fing tree. I rented a trailer for Friday, so we can take the f-er to the dump and be rid of it. And then I'll get to call a company to come grind up the stump so we can plant another tree there. 

Did I mention the recession? And the husband who works on commission? Selling ads, for the love of God?

Stupid no-good wind and stupid, stupid soft-wooded pear tree. STUPID pear tree.

We had red-hot plans for New Year's Eve, you know? Watching The Polar Express for the 25th time with the kids, and then falling asleep on the couch. Cuz life rocks like that when you have urchins running the joint. 

Instead, I'm nursing frostbite on my legs (it is TOO frostbite!) and wind burn on my cheeks and looking to half a day more of chopping up wood, to expose the entire front of my house to the elements and make it look like a new housing development.

I HATE new housing developments.

But it didn't fall on the house. And nobody got hurt. And tomorrow, this no-good sumbitch year will end. Be. Gone. Foul. Beast. And on January 20, my unicorn will be delivered and everything will be sparkly roses and sunshine, yes? Cuz that's what we were promised. Effing Utopia.

Stupid.

Tree.