Christmas Claws

I figure it’s time to take down the Christmas tree when the lights haven’t worked for two weeks, there’s a mysterious lump under the tree skirt that resembles petrified reindeer poop, and local landscapers offer to buy the pile of mulch in the corner of my living room.

I hate to take down the Christmas tree because as long as it is in the room, that corner is as close to decorated as it is any time during the year. I have teenage boys in the house. Once the tree is gone, that spot will automatically give way to a pile of cast off T shirts, sixteen pairs of old tennis shoes, and a large tabby cat. Actually, the cat may be lost somewhere in the maze of branches. I haven’t seen him since before the lights stopped working, but every now and then I can hear the angel on top purr. I think she's had a little too much catnip.

When the breeze of the ceiling fan caused a pile of pine needles the size of a sand dune to settle on the floor, the man who promised to love, honor, and teach the teenagers to drive crossed his arms and regarded the Christmas tree with raised eyebrows.

“It's gotta go.”

I came up beside him, licking the sprinkles off the last holiday cupcake. “It could be a Presidents Day tree. You could hang little pictures of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln on it.”

“The kind of pictures you find on small bills? What if I make it easy and just slip you a twenty?”

“What if I go to the mall and take out my New Year's anxieties on the clearance racks?”

“I don’t have enough presidents for that sort of stimulus package.”

“Well, how long does it take for wood to petrify?” I mused.

“Why do you ask?”

“Maybe we could leave it in the corner all year and pass it off as a sculpture.”

“If dead plants make great sculptures, we have an entire art museum around here.”

The man had a valid point. I’ve killed enough vegetation to decorate a dozen zombie weddings.

I reached for a drooping branch. "According to tradition, all of the decorations should be put away before the New Year starts.

A paw shot out of the center of the tree, snatched the marshmallow snowman off of my cupcake with one claw and disappeared without a sound. A pool of dry needles puddled on the carpet at my feet.

We stepped back a safe distance from the tree. "Let's leave it," I said handing him the tattered remains of the cupcake. "I think the ghost of Christmas past lives in there and he means business."

Taxing Times

“Why is our refund so. . .numerically deficient?” I paused without signing the tax returns and wrinkled my nose in an “Okay who made the stinky?” face so Bill Dear would appreciate the gravity of the situation and conjure a larger refund out of random bits of dust and dog hair.

“That’s all we get.” He said with a shrug and a blank look. He is not as proficient as I am in the art of conversation by facial expression. Now that I think of it, his blank look is the only conversational facial expression he has, excepting his “Everyone is going to die” face, which I can cause him to produce with astounding regularity.

“But last year we got twice as much.” Here I added my “This deficit is obviously the fault of some politician who owes me money. Otherwise it’s your fault in which case you’d better cough up some dough” face.

“We could only claim one son.”

“But I’ve got the stretch marks to prove two children and a small elephant.” I have a face for this, but it couldn’t possibly help the situation at this point.

“It doesn’t matter. We can only claim one son as a dependent.”

“I cook potatoes five nights a week. Anything that moves slowly through my kitchen gets grill marks. There is enough ice cream in our refrigerator to open our own Baskin Robbins outlet store. And there is a pallet of Fruity Pebbles sprouting groves of fruit trees with artificial flavors on the back porch. Don’t tell me they’re not dependent.”

“Son One has a job. He filed his own tax return.”

“Oh sure, I wait 20 years for him to do something by himself and he picks tax time. Why wasn’t he this prompt when he was potty training?”

“Because he didn’t get something nice direct deposited in his bank account for that.”

“He gave me a direct deposit, but I can’t say it was that nice.”

“Just be glad you didn’t get dividends.”

“No, but I got a surprise in his bathwater once.”

“That’s okay. If we kept good records over the year we can itemize and maybe we'll come out better.”

“Great.”

“Okay, where’s the box?”

“The box?”

“The box with all our receipts so we can see what we spent.”

“Oh, we didn’t have a box that was big enough.” I handed him a huge, black garbage bag, it’s contents bulging like it belonged to a pre-Christmas Eve Santa.

He peered inside. “There’s nothing in here but empty Girl Scout cookie boxes.”

“Right. You wanted to know where our money went.”

“It all went for Girl Scout cookies?”

“Yep, but I was smart.” I dug way down past flattened cardboard cartons, crinkly wrappers and cookie crumbs and pulled out one last perfect box full of Thin Mints.

“What’s that?”

“I’m way ahead of the government." I took a bite of cookie heaven. "This is our stimulus package.”

Bill Dear gave me a look. And it wasn’t his blank expression.

I think I'm gonna need a bigger box.