The Perfect Day

All Thanksgiving Break Morgan and I have been looking forward to this Sunday! And it was well worth the wait!
After spending barely two days in Charlotte, Morgan and I spent an hour or so at the Charlotte-Douglas airport overlook with Kate and her boyfriend before hitting the road for home. In separate cars, we tagged alongside each other, keeping time and waving at each other ridiculously whenever we passed each other. The trip was easy and fun. The stresses of the holidays were left behind us on the road, and we flew along I-40 with one thing in mind: sleep! Arriving at home, we unloaded the cars and relaxed in each other's arms before I fell half asleep in bed while Morgan typed up part of his 7-page paper due in two days.

We woke up for our anticipated day together at the ungodly hour of 7 a.m. thanks to Sparta's incessant wailing! His wailing turned into batting at my hands with his claws out when I refused to answer. Eventually, Morgan and I were up without a choice and making fluffy, warm pancakes in the kitchen with Sparta tearing through the apartment with the never-ending energy only he and a four-year-old possess.
After pancakes, Morgan and I decided it was time for some cleaning. The apartment has been a mess for weeks! No one has had time or everyone is just too lazy to participate in some housecleaning and organizing. Morgan got the kitchen; I was assigned the living room. While Morgan tackled the mountain of dishes in the sink, I vacuumed with a fury! This may sound "un-perfect" and horrible because it's housework, but Morgan and I enjoyed ourselves! He has this cleaning streak... like Kate! Suddenly, Morgan must clean something and off he goes! I find it to be quite useful. I'll come home from a long day at school and find a recently scrubbed bathroom!
"I love you and I appreciate all that you do."
When the carpet was clean, the tile mopped, and every surface clorox-ed, Morgan and I headed out to Little Honda to visit the Ty-Lynn Christmas Tree Farm.
Since the first time my heart was badly broken, I have dreamed of nothing else but owning my own home. This meant buying my own furniture, painting my walls and then repainting them, gardening out back, cooking the family Thanksgiving turkey, and BUYING MY OWN CHRISTMAS TREE!
I have yet to achieve my goal of owning a house, but I do have an apartment I share with my boyfriend and three roommates. And today I got to go out and by my own Christmas tree for the first time.
Ty-Lynn is a family-owned Christmas tree farm in the middle of nowhere (a.k.a. Cullowhee) and sells everything from 5-foot trees to 16-foot trees to handmade wreaths. Morgan and I were searching for something 3-foot or under because of our lack of space in the apartment. Also, we couldn't afford a large Christmas tree and everything else to light and decorate it as well as a tree stand. When I was searching the web for Christmas tree farms, I saw Ty-Lynn had trees "under 5'" so I called to see how under 5-foot they were.
"Well, we have everything pretty much," said the woman. "We even have little Charlie Brown Christmas trees out back behind the barn. They aren't as perfect, you know, have some gaps and holes. They're $10."
"That sounds perfect!" I cried.
She laughed. "Great!"

So off Morgan and I went through the winding roads of Cullowhee. Up, up, up, up the mountain we went, swerving and curving until we began to follow the happy Santa signs to the Christmas tree farm. Quickly, we realized this wasn't just a Christmas tree farm.
First, we passed a pen of llamas and alpacas!
Then, there were trout ponds.
A chicken coop.
A pot-bellied pig.
Ducks.
This place had it all and it was surrounded by acres and acres of land covered in rolling hills of green grass and Christmas trees!
At the barn, we were given the scoop of how things worked: you rode in the 1950 Chevy truck to the trees, picked one out, the crew cut it down and carted it back, you paid, and got your picture taken to put up on the yearly Christmas board and if you could find your picture next year you got 15% off your purchase! There was a bonfire smoking, free apple cider, and a stand to buy a hamburger or hot dog while you waited for the truck to come back for another load of Christmas tree-buyers.
"Actually, we're just interested in the Charlie Brown Christmas trees," I said.
"Oh, they're around back along the wall."
Morgan and I, now separated from the growing group of people waiting on the Chevy to return, walked around the back of the barn where lined up against the wall were the cut tops of several Christmas trees.
"Aww, Morgan, look!" I cried, delighted by our discovery of little, perfect-for-apartment-sized trees.
After much playful debate, we chose our Christmas tree and headed inside to pay.
"Yay you found one!" said the woman at the register. "You know, we used to throw those out but then people started asking for them."
"It's perfect for our apartment," said Morgan, who I was hugging tightly as he balanced our new little tree on its severed trunk.

We brought the tree home after another lovely drive through the mountains, talking about what I wanted in my dream home and how Morgan might get employee-of-the-month for November. Without a tree stand, Morgan took the mop out of the Wal-Mart blue bucket and there our Christmas tree stands... in a Wal-Mart blue mop bucket.
Off to the Dollar Tree where we bought little ornaments: a 12-pack of mini presents, a 12-pack of little drums, and four clay ornaments of a fat happy reindeer, a ball ornament, a stocking, and a sprig of holly. Then, a gold star with lights at Wal-Mart and a string of lights.
I was bouncing with excitement at the thought of decorating my Christmas tree. It was what I always wanted: a little tree in a bucket, some pretty lights, little tacky ornaments, and a loving boyfriend who willfully covered his hands in sap many times today. He wrestled with the star for a long while trying to make it perfectly straight and after sawing off half of the top spine, he did.
"I love you and I appreciate all that you do!"
Then, the lights! The strand we bought not only did have an electric plug-in on both sides, it was also too short. Morgan tried hanging the lights. Then, I tried hanging them. Both times the tree looked retarded with a strand of lights that obviously did not fit our Charlie Brown tree. It was quite discouraging, but we headed back into town were Morgan picked up a new, longer strand of white lights and we got ourselves some Bojangles chicken! It's not a good Sunday without some Bojangles chicken!

After watching Flash of Genius while munching on chicken, we tackled the lights again. Now we had a 25-foot strand of lights to encircle our the uneven, mismatched branches. First, I tried because of Morgan saying I "had the most experience" because I had told him of how "I was the one who lit the tree back at home because I was the only one tall enough to reach the top branches." Well, that didn't go very well. Morgan had to step in, once again getting sap all over his hands which he CANNOT stand, and fixed my slapdash job. It didn't end up being perfect but there was nothing perfect about the tree in the first place. The last thing that was going to happen was two inexperienced Christmas decorators putting on perfectly placed lights, which is already a sucky, difficult job for any professional.
Finally!! I got to decorate my tree with the little ornaments I picked out! I was soooooo excited!!! It was becoming a family Christmas tree now with dangling gold, red, and silver drums, shimmering presents, and the four clay ornaments that looked like Morgan and I had actually sat down and created them ourselves. With Christmas background music from a CD I found in a Corn Chex cereal box years ago, I was creating my own tradition, the tradition I would start as I began to miss out on the family Christmas tree decorating in Charlotte. And to have Morgan there at my side... well, it'd be really nice if that continued to stay part of the tradition.
Finished, I sat down in the rocking chair and Morgan seated himself on my lap. Together, we rocked while staring at the tree as a beautiful opera number began to play on the CD. And it was the perfect end to our perfect day, and my eyes began to tear up because I was so happy to have this as my last day on break before heading back to the stresses of school in the morning. Just him and me rocking in the chair in the darkened living room of my apartment with Sparta purring on the love seat and the lights twinkling on our Charlie Brown Christmas tree in a mop bucket. I looked at Morgan and smiled blissfully, widely, gleefully.
"Merry Christmas, Morgan."
"Merry Christmas, Lexi."