When I was a child, hunting for the perfect Christmas tree was a family tradition that we did each year, consisting of bundling up, traveling an hour or so to a tree farm, and spending the next four hours hiking amongst the 70 acres of carefully cultivated holiday shrubbery until we had narrowed the field of 187,322 trees to that one, special, Tree-of-All-Trees that the angels endorsed, poets lamented, and would fit within both our living room and my parents’ budget.    We’d hack it down with an old-fashioned hand saw (because we love the manual labor) and hoof it back across the tundra to the car.    The balance of the day was then spent thawing our limbs, dragging the tree inside, and after decorating it, spending the next 7 hours picking needles out of the shag.

It was…memorable.

Ontop of this, I would then spend the next month or so sneezing my ass off everytime I was in the house because, as it would have it, I am allergic to pine trees.   (My personal hell is filled with wreaths.) However, I loved them so much (or so I thought) that I put up with it and simply walked around in a Benadryl-fueled haze for the majority of the season.    No wonder the holidays were always so jolly!

These days I’ve forgone the drug-enhanced fun of real trees for the less-nasally-frictive practice of putting up a fake tree that does a reasonable job of approximating The Tree and saves the family a small fortune in Kleenex.    However, we wanted my son to have the family bonding fun of hiking the wooded wilderness in preparation for Christmas (it serves as a penance for sins, I figure), so we took him along when Grandpa and Amy went to locate their shrub of choice.

The below is the resulting photologue of the day, which was terribly nice (completely unlike the arctic temps I was subjected to in my childhood) and lovely lighting for photography.     Keston had a blast.

This past Saturday we took off and went to Des Moines and the Blank Park Zoo, a place I had not been to since I was a kid, and at the time simply remember there being a lot of pens with animals inside, so I really didn’t know what to expect — would it be like a fancy farm or like a real zoo?   Would they have anything more exciting than a chicken?

As it turned out, the zoo is a rather nice place these days, having nice paths and landscaping and easy ways to get around to see all the sights.   Unfortunately, the giraffes, which are apparently the stars of the show, were not on display due to some fence-fixing, so we didn’t partake in feeding or seeing them, but that exclusion did garner us a 20% discount, which was nice.

On the whole, the place was…OK.   None of the animals were spectacular, but they were better than your average Holstein.   The environment was very nice, the staff reasonably friendly (for what we interacted with them), and the weather was mint.   I think, all in all, it wasn’t a completely wasted day.

Photo evidence for those of you who read Playboy for the, “articles”:   (click to zoom in!)

The world outside is harsh and cold; winds blow and snow drifts.   People venture forth gently into the chill night to gather at each other’s houses for warmth, friendship, and to take their minds off the daily hum-drum of life.

I am the Scrooge this year; the “bah” in your”humbug” and the dissenter from the happyness of the season.    The hassle outweighs the benefits this year, BUT — read me not wrong, for my heart is not entirely full of dark.

For those I call friends and even to those I do not, I wish you these:  Introspection.   Pause.   Remembrance.    Reflection.   Regret.   Absolution.  Resolve.   Repair.

And hope.

The heart that beats within my cynical chest is still warm, and there is much of me that wishes the best of possible futures for others.    Enjoy your holiday & solstice season and remember that however icy and windswept your reality might be, at least I am cheering for a change.

My best, from mine to yours.

P.S. – I really need a tripod to take high-ISO photos like this one.   I managed to take it by leaning the camera against the doorframe, but golly was it difficult.