OK, you know what, I’m Irish. That’s why I got married on St. Patrick’s day. And that’s also why it should be no surprise that, on Martin Luther King day, I got pissed off for almost no reason whatsoever and decided to throw out our Christmas tree.

“What? It’s like, ALMOST FEBRUARY!” I can hear you all saying. But my husband forms emotional attachments in inanimate objects, and the taking down of the Christmas tree is always very painful for him. He had to work Monday, so I thought I’d SEIZE THE MOMENT and just fucking do it myself.

Some things to know:

– the christmas tree was the most massive thing that had ever been in our apartment, including Katsu’s friend Megazone who is about 10 feet tall and could bench-press my whole family with one arm.

– the christmas tree was dead – like, brown dead – and had been dropping needles since December 12.

– due to the positioning of said tree, removing it involved three 90-degree turns and a significant amount of dragging over old carpet.

– to get the tree out, I had to first tip it over on its side, thus spilling any water in the tree stand onto the floor.

Here is the tree, after half an hour of kicking, dragging, and cursing:

GOOD RIDDANCE, TREE.

Here is my apartment, after wrestling the tree outside:

SO SORRY, APARTMENT.

Here is Jake, who hated the commotion and subsequently took a shit next to my bed:

DON’T GIVE ME THAT LOOK, CAT-BEAST.

I spent an hour or more cleaning up, and later on that night, my landlord came a’knocking on the door.

“Did you guys have any, um, water problems up here? Like, you know, spills or anything?”

no, i replied, and related a brief synopsis of my angst-filled afternoon. “But I did spill a little. From the tree stand?”

“Hm.” said our landlord. “Because the downstairs tenants said that their bed is soaked.”

I think it was right about then that I stuck my head in the oven.