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It didn't happen.
For one reason or another on his side or mine, we could not meet. He couldn't get over here, or I couldn't get over there.
He could not visit to indulge in Stace's vegemite from Australia for a totally excellent blog post, to consume rye and pepsi's, horse doovruhs, pictures of him and his gone gonads, peanuts and smoked oysters and Phase 10.
And then, despite the best laid plans for me to head over to his place Saturday and to get beautiful hugs from his lovely lady-wife, who spoils me every time I go over there, I had to stay here to chaperone my son and his girlfriend.
He and I always know that we will meet soon and we'll have a testosterone-laden good time. On top of that, we'll simultaneously solve all the world's problems.
But circumstances didn't permit that to happen these last few days. It will.
In the meantime, though, another dominant force invaded my otherwise lonely, single tranquility this weekend. I had my kids with me.
And while the testosterone is always flying around uncontrollably when my now drama-driven 17-year-old son is here, the other "her"mones of my 20-year-old daughter more or less crowd out us two males.
And around Christmas, my daughter dominates even more than usual.
She's a very take-charge sort of girl, but that's not so unlike intelligent women that make the world go round. She's crazy about Christmas.
She's always been the one to kick me in the butt and insist the Christmas tree be erected on the first weekend in December that I have my kids.
And of course what that means is I get to do all the boring bull-work, then she flits in later to add all the decorative flair.
And that's what this post is all about.
So in this particular year, I found that the stand for my totally fake Christmas tree was more challenging than Christmases past.
Maybe this is saying something about my sex life as I age, but erecting a tall, straight tree is all about having a secure stand and base to begin with. It's all about putting the screws in the right holes, so to speak.
And there was a particular difficulty with that this year. Shall we call it "erectile dysfunction?"
After much fiddling around with my equipment through the use of pliers and other artificial aids to line up all the appropriate holes to align them properly with the screws, I finally got the dang thing more or less ready.
You can see the complications. I'm not talking about one screw and one hole. I'm talking about four screws and, altogether, 16 orifices. But eventually, I got them all to line up.
As you can see, my son was incredibly helpful.
Anyway, I finally got everything into the proper receptacles, which then allowed me to finally insert the tree into the stand.
But was my bullish work accomplished? No.
Then I had to adorn the tree with lights, which my daughter refuses to do. This was a two-day process, by the way. Erecting the tree and putting the lights on it was Day 1, Saturday.
So after Day 1, this was my progress.
What follows is Day 2. Once Queen Sheba decided it suited her to actually put the decorations on, she was all business. She even deigned that I could record her doing so.
She even was agreeable to being one of Bob's Beauties (Bob Barker of the Price is Right) in one of those goofy poses...
Here are some other Christmas decorations she did in my apartment...
Oh, and what about my son? Well, he slept through most of it. Then he woke up and asked me to make him a bacon and cheese omelette.
Merry Christmas!
