You know you’ve been out of work too long when…

• You’re excited about Michael Strahan’s new dressing room reveal tomorrow;
• You know which Twilight star is dumber than a post, which one is the post, and which one actually has a brain. And uses it;
• You no longer stop typing when a cat lies (lays?) across your arms;
• You have to go to The Oatmeal to figure out if it should be lays or lies. (It’s lies.)

I know you’re all shocked because this is two posts in two days, as opposed to my usual once a week/month/lifetime routine I’ve had going lately. But I knew you all wanted to know how the tree building went.

First, boys do not know how to fluff trees. Shocked, I am. Especially since I’ve been re-teaching this skill for five years. So I went through the refresher. Some branches have to point forward to cover the florist wire, some to the left, some to the right, some down so we have a full tree. And still, the skill does not come naturally to those with a Y chromosome.

OK, this tree is 11 years old, so it gave up on full years ago. But it was a really good tree I got for about $2.32 when I worked at Michael’s because that was more fun than potty training one of my children. Yes, I really chose retail during the holiday season over potty training a child. And I wonder why I haven’t been nominated for Mom of the Year.

Back to the tree. Rockefeller Center’s got nothing on this 7.5-foot plastic concoction currently sitting in my living room. Snarky Daughter, being a girl, was all about the fluffing.

You know what’s really depressing? A Christmas tree without stuff on it. So we built the tree and Stumpasaurus Rex immediately tried to figure out how to scale the tree. Given that he’s missing a back leg and can’t jump well, you’d think I could breathe a sigh of relief. The problem is, he’s muscle. Since he can’t launch himself, he pulls himself up things. He is regularly at the top of the 6-foot cat tree.

Which is the other reason I was worried about the tree. Given that they already have one thing to climb in the room, would the cats see the difference?  I really expected a cat as a tree topper.

Rex is crafty. He spent the evening under the tree trying to figure out how to get up the clothing hanger branches. We’d be watching TV and all of a sudden some part of the tree would start shaking.

I had a glass of wine and generally ignored it. Athena, Goddess of Christmas Trees, felt that this tree was like any other plant (real or fake) in the house and it was meant to be eaten. For that, I grabbed a spray bottle and shot her with water. She was not amused. I expect a retaliatory hairball any time now.

This morning, I’m staring at an empty tree and the cats are totally. Ignoring. It. Totally. Like, OMG.

I may speed up the process and add lights. So tune in next time (I almost wrote tomorrow, but that seemed like a promise I was going to blog tomorrow, hahahaha) to see what’s going on with holiday preparations.

And find out if I mess with Bon Appetite’s Pumpkin Cheesecake recipe or if I keep it pure for Thanksgiving.